


With a Conquering Air

by inexplicifics



Series: The Accidental Warlord and His Pack [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bathing/Washing, Endearments, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Explicit Consent, Found Family, Kaer Morhen's Fanon Hot Springs (The Witcher), M/M, Pining, Singing, Slow Burn, Timeline What Timeline, sort of anyhow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:07:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23273713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics
Summary: From the kinkmeme:AU Warlord!Geralt receives Tribute!Jaskier as a sacrifice to appease him in every way possible. Jaskier has no choice on the matter and he’s fully aware of the awful rumours that have spread about Geralt and his ruthless conquests. (But we all know those aren’t legit.) A classic angst with a happy ending please! A dash of smut to heal those scars and a sprinkle of new found love!Jaskier arrives at Kaer Morhen knowing his family gave him up without a second thought, and absolutely sure that the dreaded Warlord of the North will value him even less than his own blood did. But the White Wolf and his pack are not what Jaskier expected...and if he's unreasonably lucky, Kaer Morhen might become far more of a home than Lettenhove ever was.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Eskel, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Jaskier | Dandelion, Eskel & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Eskel & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion & Triss Merigold, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: The Accidental Warlord and His Pack [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683661
Comments: 1139
Kudos: 9378
Collections: Ashes' Library, Fics worth many re-reads, Good Relationship Etiquette (familial included) - or Good BDSM Etiquette - or Good Relationship and BDSM Etiquette, Witcher Kink Meme (Dreamwidth)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This plays merry havoc with the timeline: I just sort of grabbed characters and threw them in where I needed them.

_It’s not like he’s doing anyone any good_ here. _May as well be useful once before he dies._

The words are still ringing in Jaskier’s head, a full month after they were first spoken - a full month after his father said them, every syllable like a separate barb, like a flight of arrows aimed perfectly for his heart. He’d thought - he’d been pretty sure he was going to end up as the chosen sacrifice, as an unmarried fourth child with no particular prospects and a reasonably pretty face, but he’d thought his father might at least _protest_ \- might put up some sort of token objection - not…

Not suggest it himself.

He’d hoped his siblings might object, too, not turn away or shrug or even _smile_. Hoped his mother might speak. Hoped _someone_ might point out how cruel it is to send _anyone_ into the White Wolf’s jaws as a sacrifice. No one had.

There’s suspecting your family has never loved you, and there’s _knowing_ it, and the knowing is like a coal in Jaskier’s heart, burning with a slow and sullen heat, and Jaskier rather expects it won’t stop until his heart is burnt to ash.

His guards draw the horse to a halt outside the gates of a great hulking fortress. It’s...really ridiculously imposing, all dark stone and jagged crenellations and heavy iron-barred gates. A suitable den for the warlord everyone calls the White Wolf. Jaskier sits quietly as one of the guards walks up to the gates and knocks, the set of his shoulders suggesting that he would rather be _anywhere_ else. All the guards are twitchy, unhappy, tense - Jaskier can’t really blame them. Walking into the White Wolf’s jaws like this has got to be nerve-wracking.

Being _sent_ into the White Wolf’s jaws is something so far past nerve-wracking that Jaskier has come out the other side of panic into an odd glassy sort of calm, where everything seems a little too far away and even his own body doesn’t quite seem to be his. He’s been very docile, this past month of travel, not even putting up a fuss about the ropes around his wrists - silk, but strong enough for all that - or the constant presence of the guards even when he sleeps or uses the latrine. He hasn’t even been able to come up with anything resembling music, which - he can’t remember the last time he went a full month without composing _something_. He hasn’t been silent so long since he learned to speak, hasn’t kept from singing for more than a day or two since he first realized that his voice _could_ produce music.

The only words in his head, this last month, have been his father’s venom, and that’s hardly a song Jaskier cares to sing. And when he does manage to distract himself from _that_ , the only thing his frightened mind can find to fix on is the White Wolf himself - or what little Jaskier knows of him.

It’s been more than fifteen years since the White Wolf suddenly _appeared_ , leading an army of inhumanly strong warriors, and overthrew the king of Kaedwen. Jaskier was a child when it happened, and all he knew was that all of a sudden, all of the adults were _scared_ , and people whispered to each other strange things about wolves and monsters. As he grew older and the White Wolf’s conquests became more remarkable, Jaskier started actually hearing the rumors:

The White Wolf is more - or less - than a man, somehow crossbred with the giant wolves of the mountains, ferocious and vicious and unpredictable.

The White Wolf has a ravenous appetite, for food and sex alike, and not all the beautiful young people who are taken to his bed walk away again.

The White Wolf has a temper like a mountain storm, swift and unexpected and so violent that even rocks and trees are broken in its wake.

The White Wolf is a warrior without peer, stronger and faster and more deadly even than his inhuman warriors; he can break spears with his bare hands and cleave men in twain with a single swing of his sword.

The White Wolf, in short, has swiftly become the boogeyman that every child in the north fears, and every _adult_ in the north, even if, like Jaskier, they are wise enough to discount at least half of the rumors, is _also_ afraid of. And Jaskier doesn’t know which half of the rumors to discount. Regardless of which half he picks, being sent into the White Wolf’s jaws sounds like a good way to die, hopefully quickly but definitely painfully, and Jaskier isn’t looking forward to that at all.

But here he is.

A little door in the great iron-barred gate creaks open, and a man steps out. No, not a man - a Witcher, one of the White Wolf’s troops, the cat-eyed men who make up his unstoppable army, the ones who move faster and strike harder and sense more keenly than any mortal man could do. Jaskier can’t see the slitted eyes from here, but the paired swords on the man’s back - and the silver medallion hanging about his throat - are visible enough, and no one else goes armed like that. He is brown-haired, and his face bears a terrible scar, and he moves like a predator.

The guard backs up several feet and bows clumsily. “Sir,” he says, “we have brought - we have brought a gift, from the lords of Redania, with their compliments to the White Wolf.”

The Witcher looks the guard up and down, crosses his arms in front of his chest, and turns to regard Jaskier thoughtfully. After a moment he paces closer, and makes a slow circuit around Jaskier’s horse. The guards all stand very, very still, and Jaskier can hear them breathing hard. The horse doesn’t seem to care.

Jaskier, his hands bound in front of him, that strange glassy feeling still encasing him, doesn’t move. The Witcher will accept him or not; if accepted, he will be brought before the White Wolf, and if refused…

Jaskier’s not actually sure what’s going to happen if he’s refused. He can’t exactly go _home_.

The Witcher stops in front of Jaskier, and Jaskier looks down to meet his eyes. They are, indeed, slitted like a cat’s, and an unusual shade of amber. The medallion about his throat bears the head of a snarling wolf. If Jaskier recalls correctly, the Wolf Witchers are the ones nearest the White Wolf’s throne - the ones he trusts most. There are also Bear, and Cat, and Griffin, and Viper, and probably some Jaskier can’t recall just now, behind the glass of his past-panic calm.

“Huh,” says the Witcher thoughtfully. “And who’re you, then?”

Jaskier swallows. “Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove,” he says, because if it’s the last time he’s ever going to be able to claim it, he’ll say his own name. His father’s probably already stricken him from the family books, but Jaskier doesn’t _know_ that yet.

“That’s a fair mouthful,” the Witcher says, though he doesn’t sound particularly annoyed. Still, best to be accommodating, right? Best to be as flexible as possible, in case - in case that will help. It probably won’t. Jaskier’s good at being annoying. But he can at least start on the right foot.

“Most people call me Jaskier,” he offers, and the Witcher’s eyebrows go up a little.

“Huh,” he says, and shrugs, and takes the horse’s reins from the unresisting hands of the guard. The guards back away hastily. The Witcher turns towards the gate and whistles a complicated little phrase, and one side of the gate creaks open, just far enough to admit the Witcher and the horse.

And Jaskier.

“Do - does the White Wolf accept the tribute?” the lead guard quavers as the Witcher leads Jaskier’s horse past him.

The Witcher pauses, looks the guard up and down again - like he’s assessing how hard it would be to kill him, and deciding it’s not even worth the trouble, Jaskier thinks with a vague impression that he ought to be terrified, and will be, just as soon as this glassy calm runs out - and shrugs. “Tell King Vizimir he’d do better to _ask_ what the White Wolf wants,” the Witcher says coolly. “But I suppose we’ll take the lad.”

Jaskier doesn’t laugh, but behind the glass he’s almost amused. He’s not even wanted as _tribute_. Gods, has he ever felt more useless?

“Thank you, sir, thank you,” the guard babbles, and the Witcher snorts and leads Jaskier’s horse through the gate.

It closes behind them with an almost gentle _thump_ , and Jaskier is inside the walls of the White Wolf’s fortress, and he has never felt quite so alone.

*

“Alright then,” says the Witcher, “let’s get you down.” He reaches up and _picks Jaskier up_ , hands almost spanning Jaskier’s waist, and lifts him easily down from the saddle. Jaskier stumbles a little before he finds his footing, and stares at the Witcher in surprise.

A voice behind him, drawling and amused, says, “What’s this, then, Eskel?”

“Tribute from Redania, apparently,” says the Witcher. Eskel. Jaskier’s heard that name before. The White Wolf’s right hand, his most trusted captain.

Another Witcher comes sauntering around into Jaskier’s line of sight - a Wolf Witcher, by the medallion. His hair is darker than Eskel’s, and his eyes a deeper shade of amber, and there’s a sort of smirk to his expression that Jaskier doesn’t quite like. “What, they’re sending _people_ now?”

“Looks like,” Eskel says, and draws a knife. Jaskier doesn’t flinch. What’s the point? He’s _inside_ Kaer Morhen, inside the White Wolf’s keep, and if this Witcher wants him bleeding - wants him dead - then Jaskier will be dead, and that’s all there is to it.

He _is_ surprised when what Eskel _does_ is to cut the silk rope holding Jaskier’s wrists. It falls to the cobbled courtyard, and Jaskier rubs his wrists thoughtlessly, soothing the slight red marks. Eskel puts the knife away. “C’mon, Jaskier. Let’s go let the Wolf have a look at you, hm? Lambert, pretend you’re useful and find a spot in the stables for the horse.”

“Fuck you,” says the other Witcher - Lambert - but without much heat to it.

Jaskier falls in behind Eskel without objection as Lambert leads the horse away. It was a perfectly nice horse, but Jaskier’s never had much rapport with animals. All of his baggage is on it...but it doesn’t seem worth pointing this out, not when he might not be alive to _care_ about baggage by the time the sun sets.

Kaer Morhen, inside its imposing walls, is...just as imposing, actually. It’s still all dark stone, unadorned and uncompromising; the only decoration Jaskier sees is on the great hall doors, where a pair of carved wolves snarl at each other across the wooden surface. Inside the hall, there’s a set of long tables, none of them occupied - well, it’s midafternoon, neither dinner nor suppertime - and a dais with a bulky stone chair atop it, just as dark and plain as the walls, save for a plate-sized silver wolf’s-head medallion set into the back, just above where a seated man’s head might rest. There’s no one in it just now.

Eskel leads the way through the hall to a rather less imposing door behind the throne, and opens it without knocking. The room revealed is set up as an office, rather to Jaskier’s surprise; he’s never thought of the White Wolf, Warlord of the North, as having so plebian a thing as an _office_. But here it is, lined with bookshelves, with a large table bearing an unrolled map of the continent set in the center of the floor and another table off to the side heaped with rolled-up maps and little lead troop-markers and quills and inkpots and all the other detritus of a working office.

There are two men and a woman in the room, and Jaskier looks at them in reverse order of scariness, because he’s rather worried that when he _actually_ meets the White Wolf’s eyes, this glassy calm is going to crack and he is going to go to his knees in fear.

Least terrifying - at least at first glance - is the woman: raven-haired and violet-eyed and gloriously beautiful, with something in her stance that makes Jaskier suspect she’s a sorceress. She’s leaning over the table and gesturing at somewhere in Temeria, talking quietly to the less terrifying man.

Not to say the less-terrifying man _isn’t_ terrifying: he looks to be in his late middle-age, hair grey with years but shoulders still broad and arms still corded with muscle, and his eyes are cat-slitted, and he wears a wolf medallion and twin swords. He could break Jaskier with one hand, probably. But he’s not -

Well, he’s not the _truly_ scary man, the one leaning back against the smaller table with his arms crossed over his chest, watching his companions silently. The man with stark white hair and _golden_ slitted eyes, armed and armored as a Witcher, who can only be the White Wolf himself. He’s very, very handsome, and very, very scary, and Jaskier clasps his hands together tightly to try to stop them from shaking. It doesn’t work.

The White Wolf looks up as Eskel leads Jaskier in, and raises an eyebrow at Eskel. The sorceress and the old Witcher go silent, both looking up to regard Jaskier curiously.

“Redania decided to send you tribute, o great White Wolf,” Eskel says, sounding amused instead of respectful.

The White Wolf straightens and stalks towards Jaskier, silent as the grave, expression _utterly_ unreadable. Jaskier swallows hard and holds his ground with the very last shreds of glassy calm - breaking and running won’t help, after all. There’s nowhere for him to _go_. Very slowly, the White Wolf circles him. All the hair on the back of Jaskier’s neck stands up as the White Wolf paces behind him: _predator_ , scream his instincts, and it’s all Jaskier can do not to scream back, _I know!_

“Tribute,” rumbles the White Wolf as he finishes his circuit. Jaskier can’t tell if he’s pleased or angry.

“One Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove, called Jaskier,” Eskel says, nodding.

One snow-white eyebrow twitches upward, just a hair. “Jaskier,” the White Wolf says flatly.

Jaskier can feel himself flushing a little. It’s not exactly the name of a great hero, or anything - it’s a silly name, a _harmless_ name, and he picked it for himself and he _likes_ it, and if there was ever a person ill-suited to be tossed to the White Wolf and live to tell about it, it’s a would-be bard who named himself _Buttercup_.

“It suits him,” says the violet-eyed sorceress mildly. “Geralt, if you don’t stop glowering, he’s going to faint.”

_Geralt?_ Jaskier wonders, as the White Wolf finally turns that golden gaze away from him to pin the sorceress, who doesn’t flinch. It’s like the _sun_ has looked away from him, the weight and heat of those golden eyes almost palpable. Gods, no wonder people talk about the White Wolf’s gaze as though it’s a weapon in and of itself. Bad enough when he’s just _looking_ at Jaskier - if he’d been _angry_ , Jaskier probably _would_ have fainted.

“I don’t glower,” the White Wolf says, which is so far outside what Jaskier was expecting that his jaw actually drops.

“Geralt, darling, you hardly do anything _but_ glower,” the sorceress says, grinning. “Your face is just like that, I’m afraid.”

Whatever Jaskier expected of the White Wolf’s inner circle, it wasn’t people who _teased_ the most dangerous warlord on the _continent_. The sorceress - he thinks he heard something about this, about the prize pupil of Aretuza who threw her lot in with the White Wolf and brought half a dozen of her compatriots with her. Yennefer, that was the name. Apparently she’s done well for herself at the White Wolf’s side.

“Sometimes he snarls,” Eskel says, lounging back against a bookshelf with a bright smile. “Though I grant you that’s not much better.”

“Sometimes he’s asleep,” says the old Witcher, and the White Wolf sighs and lets his head sag forward and rubs his forehead with his fingers in - in fond exasperation. Jaskier is very, very confused.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with a viscount?” the White Wolf says, giving Jaskier a golden-eyed glance. Jaskier swallows hard. He knows what the lords of Redania _expect_ the White Wolf to do with him. He was sent to appease the Wolf’s hunger - _any_ of his hungers. Frankly, the nobility of Redania would probably be very relieved if they got word that the White Wolf had bent Jaskier over one of those long dining tables and fucked him bloody between plotting battle campaigns, because it would mean that Jaskier was performing the function he was sent to fill.

“I don’t know,” Eskel says. “What _are_ you good for?”

Jaskier flinches. He doesn’t mean to, but that glassy calm is wearing off under the new onslaught of fear and confusion, and he is about three inches from just collapsing in a weeping mess. _Everyone_ notices the flinch, though, and three sets of cat-slitted eyes and one set of violet ones go wide.

“Let me rephrase that,” says the sorceress after a moment. “What are you good _at_ , little flower?”

“I studied for four years at Oxenfurt, and graduated with honors,” Jaskier says. “I can play a lute, a viol, a harp, or a flute, and I can sing...anything you care to name. I compose, music and lyrics both.” He pauses, takes a long slow breath, and adds bitterly, “And I’m told I’m quite a good lay.”

“Huh,” says the White Wolf. Eskel and the old Witcher, whose name Jaskier hasn’t caught, both look nonplussed. The sorceress, though, looks _delighted_.

“A bard!” she says. “You’ve been needing a court bard, Geralt.”

“I have?” the White Wolf asks. Jaskier is still adjusting to the idea that the White Wolf has a name, and that it’s something as prosaic and commonplace as _Geralt_.

“If you’re going to be conquering significant swathes of the continent, you need at least one bard to make songs about it,” Yennefer says briskly. “And here’s one delivered right to your door! Very convenient.”

“Huh,” says the White Wolf again, and looks Jaskier up and down thoughtfully, eyes lingering on the lute calluses on Jaskier’s fingers. “Alright. What do you need, then, bard?”

Jaskier thinks he might collapse from sheer _bafflement_. And relief. Maybe mostly relief. “A lute?” he says. “And - ink and quills and parchment - somewhere to work - I need to know what sort of songs you want me to write -”

“Eskel, get him set up, would you?” the White Wolf asks, and turns back to the enormous map. Eskel shrugs and grins and ushers Jaskier out again, one hand on Jaskier’s shoulder to keep him upright. Jaskier is frankly grateful for it. His knees feel distinctly wobbly. His _everything_ feels distinctly wobbly.

He’s looked the White Wolf in the eyes, and has not been devoured.

*

“Let’s find you rooms,” Eskel says, and leads Jaskier up into the keep’s corridors. They pass other Witchers and ordinary men and women, warriors and servants and people whose purpose Jaskier can’t place, all of whom nod respectfully to Eskel and most of whom give Jaskier curious looks. Jaskier would normally try to be charming - to smile and wink and maybe even flirt a little - but he’s not exactly at the top of his game just now.

Eskel leads him up several flights of stairs, into one of the keep’s many towers, and down a short corridor to a perfectly ordinary door. There is, to Jaskier’s blank surprise, a _suite_ on the other side of the door: sitting room and bedroom, both well-appointed and utterly barren of personality. There’s a bookshelf and a desk in the sitting room, and a comfortable-looking chair.

“Normally a guest room,” Eskel says. “Yours now. Privy’s at the end of the hall; baths are down in the basement, we’ve got hot springs.”

Jaskier nods dazedly. He was expecting -

Well, he was expecting dungeons, or being chained at the foot of the White Wolf’s bed, or being tossed out of the gates again as not what the White Wolf wanted.

“You bring any baggage with you?” Eskel asks. Jaskier nods again.

“It was on the horse,” he says, and Eskel nods.

“I’ll have someone bring it up,” he says. “Might take me a bit to find you a lute, but ink and parchment’s easy; someone’ll bring you those by this evening.” He pauses, head cocked like he’s just heard something, and then his lips quirk into a smile even as his voice slides down into a low and menacing growl. “I hear a _heartbeat_.”

Jaskier’s breath catches. What - what on _earth_ -

Slowly, Eskel stalks towards the unlit fireplace, and then, suddenly, lunges, reaching up the chimney and yanking. To Jaskier’s abiding shock, someone falls _out_ of the chimney, landing on all fours in the fireplace. They are small, and very sooty, and Eskel swoops them up and whirls them around, burying his face against their throat and growling with a menace utterly belied by the care in his grasp. The small person giggles in clear delight, crying, “Uncle _Eskel_ ,” in a high child’s voice.

When Eskel puts the small person down, they turn to face Jaskier, and Jaskier can finally get a good look: a girl, maybe nine or ten years of age, with white-blond hair and brilliant green eyes. She grins at him fearlessly. “Uncle Eskel, who’s this?”

“This is Jaskier, from Redania,” Eskel says, ruffling her soot-streaked hair. “He’s our new bard.” He tilts his head, regarding Jasier thoughtfully for a moment. “You said you went to Oxenfurt.”

Jaskier nods. “I studied the seven liberal arts and graduated _summa cum laude_.”

“Huh,” Eskel says. “Well, I’ll have to ask your father, but it looks like you might have a new tutor, cub.” To Jaskier he adds, “This is Ciri. She’s the White Wolf’s daughter.”

Jaskier’s eyes go wide. He had no idea the White Wolf _had_ a child - certainly there’s never been any rumor about it, nor about the White Wolf taking a consort, for that matter - but the hair is certainly similar, and she _holds_ herself a little like the White Wolf does, calm and confident even so young, poised like - well, like a young wolf, swift and agile and fearless.

“It would be my honor to be the young princess’s tutor,” he says. _Princess_ is a guess - he’s not sure what one calls the daughter of a warlord.

Ciri giggles. “I’m not a princess - I’m a _menace_.”

“So you are,” Eskel says, sounding fond and long-suffering. “Come on, let’s dunk you in a hot spring before supper. Did you have to find the sootiest chimney you could?”

“I wanted to be ready to hug Uncle Lambert,” Ciri says as Eskel ushers her out. Eskel snorts and shakes his head.

“Come on down to the main hall for supper in about three hours,” he calls over his shoulder to Jaskier, and shuts the door behind him. Faintly, Jaskier can hear him say, “Let’s see if we can find Lambert on the way down to the hot springs, cub.”

Jaskier is alone, in a suite of rooms that is frankly nicer than his own rooms in Lettenhove, in the White Wolf’s keep.

He retreats very slowly into the bedroom, shuts the door, and collapses onto the bed. It’s very comfortable; the mattress is well-stuffed and the blankets are soft wool, a neutral brown that isn’t exciting but is restful for the eyes.

This is...not how he expected the day to go. It’s a hell of a lot _better_ , he’s not _complaining_ , but he feels a fair bit like he’s been knocked over the head with something heavy, because _nothing_ about today has been what he expected, except maybe the raw terror. And even that…

The White Wolf _is_ terrifying, with the golden eyes and the paired swords and the aura of just-barely-leashed danger. But he didn’t even lay a hand on Jaskier, didn’t seem to _intend_ to do so. Jaskier’s gotten pretty good at telling when people are interested in him, and as far as he could tell, the White Wolf didn’t even register him as a _possible_ sexual partner, any more than he would have done a - a mule, or a table. Which is slightly unflattering, but a _lot_ more reassuring. And no one else has been even _impolite_ , except maybe Lambert - who is apparently about to be hugged by a very sooty child, which suggests he’s more bark than bite.

So this is...not as terrible as Jaskier expected.

For some stupid reason, it’s the _lack_ of horrid danger that finally cracks that glassy calm and lets all the built-up panic and grief and _anger_ come roaring back out, and Jaskier rolls over and buries his face in the plain brown blankets and _weeps_ , tears burning his cheeks and terrible wracking sobs leaving his throat feeling scraped raw by the time he finally gets himself back under control.

He lies there feeling drained, like all his emotions have been washed away by the tears and all that’s left is a sort of waiting blankness. After a little while, quite accidentally, he falls asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Jaskier is woken by a tap on his bedroom door, and for a moment he doesn’t know where he is: this is _not_ his bedroom in Lettenhove, nor yet his room at Oxenfurt, and it certainly isn’t any of the slightly dubious inns or campsites he’s been sleeping in for the last month. Then his memories come rushing back, and he sits up fast, because he’s in the _White Wolf’s keep_ and he was supposed to go down for _supper_ and if he fails to do so he might anger Eskel, who has been actively helpful and maybe even a little friendly, and if he enrages his one possible ally in this place he’s probably _fucked_.

“Coming!” he calls to whoever is on the other side of the door, and tugs his doublet into place - it’s all rucked up from being slept in, which was not the smartest thing he could have done. He can’t do a damn thing about his scratchy eyes or the crease in his cheek from a fold in the blanket. Fuck.

He opens the door to find a boy of about thirteen waiting in the sitting room. “Jaskier?” the boy asks. “Eskel sent me to make sure you’d make it down for supper.”

Jaskier’s shoulders sag with relief. “Thank you,” he says. “Is there somewhere I can wash my face first? Or - oh, there my bags are.”

“I’ll get you a basin of water,” the boy says, and scampers off. Jaskier fishes a new doublet out of his bag and changes, and when the lad comes back, splashes some water on his face and finger-combs his hair to tidiness.

“How do I look?” he asks the lad, who gives him a thoughtful appraisal and shrugs.

“Fancy,” he says. “But nice.”

Well, Jaskier hasn’t seen anyone here wearing anything that isn’t either plain leather armor or plain servants’ garb, so...yes, alright, his simple turquoise doublet might well count as _fancy_ here. Too late to change that now, even if he ought to. “Thank you,” he says, with a little bow of gratitude, and the boy grins.

“Do you need me to lead you down to the hall?” he asks.

Jaskier considers, and nods. He’s going to need a few days to learn the corridors of the keep. Apparently he’s going to _have_ those days, if he’s to be court bard and the young princess’s tutor, instead of the White Wolf’s...sacrifice.

The boy leads him down cheerfully enough, and ushers him in through a small door that opens about halfway up the hall’s length. The long tables are filling up, Witchers and normal humans alike crowding each one, and Jaskier notices that each table’s Witchers wear different medallions. The ones closest to him have snarling bears on their chests; the next table over has rampant griffins. The head table, just below the dais and set at right angles to all the others, is filling with people wearing wolf medallions.

“There you are,” someone says, and Jaskier turns to see Eskel striding towards him. “C’mon.” He herds Jaskier ahead of him to the very end of the Wolf table, the least important seat - but still a seat at the high table, which Jaskier was _not_ expecting. There aren’t many other non-Witchers at the Wolf table: Ciri, scrubbed clean, is at the left hand of the imposing chair at the center of the table, and Yennefer at _her_ left hand, and another woman who is probably also a sorceress about halfway further down the table’s length. Other than that, it’s all Witchers...and Jaskier.

Eskel settles into the chair to the right of the White Wolf’s, and Jaskier turns his attention to his own neighbor: a sober-looking dark-haired Witcher who is eyeing Jaskier dubiously. Jaskier offers a hand. “I’m Jaskier.”

“Oh!” the Witcher says, and shakes his hand. “Aubry. I thought Lambert was making shit up again, claiming we’d gotten a bard.”

Gotten a bard? Not _been sent tribute_? Jaskier blinks for a moment. “Well, here I am,” he says at last, for lack of any better idea.

“Here you are,” Aubry agrees, and that seems to be all the conversation he cares to make. Jaskier sits in awkward silence watching the room fill for a moment, before the benches and chairs are scraping back and he hurries to rise to his feet along with everyone else as the White Wolf comes in, the old Witcher whose name Jaskier didn’t catch a pace behind him.

The White Wolf takes his place at the table and looks around, golden eyes seeming to note every person in the room. Jaskier draws in a sharp breath as that piercing gaze sweeps over him. But the White Wolf just nods, and sits, and everyone else sits, and a line of servants starts bringing out platters of food.

Aubry isn’t exactly a scintillating conversation partner, but he _does_ make sure to pass the platters all the way down to Jaskier, which makes him a hell of a lot politer than any of Jaskier’s siblings, so Jaskier decides he likes him. The food is not fancy - venison, dark bread and good salted butter, wilted spinach with bacon, a spread that wouldn’t be out of place on a fairly wealthy peasant’s board save for the fact that there’s so _much_ of it - but it’s well-made and hot, and Jaskier hasn’t been eating very well recently. He eats his fill and thinks it’s the finest meal he’s had in...in a very long time.

Meals at home were always flavored with disappointment and derision; meals at Oxenfurt tended to be whatever he could scrounge between study sessions and practice sessions and (being perfectly honest) ill-advised flirtations. This may well be the finest meal Jaskier has had since he was a child too young to know he wasn’t what his father wanted him to be.

He’s feeling quite contented with the world when his plate is finally empty, and sits back with a mug of really nice ale to watch the room. Witchers are not quiet diners: the rumble of conversation is loud enough that Jaskier would probably have to yell to make himself heard if he _wanted_ to talk to Aubry. It’s _happy_ conversation, though, laughter ringing above the commotion regularly, and Jaskier can see Witchers bumping shoulders or clapping each other on the back, clearly teasing and joking together, at every table and even between the tables. The normal humans scattered among the Witchers don’t seem apprehensive about their companions, either; Jaskier can see a woman at the Bear table scolding a Witcher who looks quite amusingly sheepish, a man at the Griffin table telling a story that involves a great deal of expansive gesturing for which the Witchers on either side of him simply lean out of the way. Ciri, over beside the White Wolf, is bouncing in her seat as she talks to her father, and Jaskier is mildly astonished to see the White Wolf bending his head to listen to her with a tiny _smile_ on his lips, nodding along with whatever she is saying amiably. Yennefer is chuckling into her goblet - _she_ gets wine, Jaskier notices, though no one else seems to. The other sorceress, past Yennefer, is talking to the Witcher beside her animatedly, and he is nodding and frowning as though deeply interested in her words.

None of the humans in the hall - those at the tables or the servants carrying platters of food and pitchers of ale - seem at all frightened of their cat-eyed companions. And none of the Witchers, so far as Jaskier can see, are _doing_ anything that would induce fear. Most of them are just...eating and talking and joking with each other, as any group of comrades might; a few, their meal finished, are having a wrestling match between the tables. All the reaction _that_ gets from anyone around them is for people to scoot their benches a little further in, and one young woman kicks at the wrestlers until they roll off to the end of the hall and then goes back to her dinner as though she hadn’t just been _kicking_ a pair of men who could have easily slain her without even breaking stride.

Which suggests that though they _could_ , they won’t. That sort of unthinking trust is something that’s _earned_ , and the fact that _every_ human in the hall seems utterly unbothered by the Witchers around them means...means that as long as you’re on their side, Witchers probably aren’t _actively_ dangerous. Presumably there are lines that oughtn’t be crossed, and Jaskier will have to learn them; and he knows they’re terrible to have as enemies, each Witcher far more dangerous than an entire company of human troops; but maybe this will be...survivable. Possibly even _fun_ , once Jaskier gets his feet under him. Certainly most of the Witchers don’t seem as prone to glowering as the White Wolf who leads them.

He glances over at the White Wolf, who is -

Who is looking right at him.

Jaskier swallows hard. The White Wolf inclines his head, just a little - a beckoning gesture. Jaskier puts his mug down, takes a deep breath, and stands, walking as calmly as he can along behind the row of Wolf Witchers until he’s standing beside the White Wolf’s chair.

The White Wolf pushes back his chair and rises, and claps a hand on Jaskier’s shoulder, tugging him to stand beside him, both of them looking out over the hall. Eskel gives a short, sharp whistle, and silence falls through the entire hall _far_ more quickly than Jaskier would have expected. Every eye turns to the White Wolf - and, perforce, to Jaskier.

This is not like standing up on a stage to perform. Jaskier has never actually experienced stage fright - he likes performing far too much to fear it - but if this is what it feels like, he suddenly has _much_ more sympathy for his fellow students who _did_ suffer from it.

“This is Jaskier, from Redania,” the White Wolf says. “Our new bard.” There’s a low murmur of mild surprise at that, which is cut off when the White Wolf adds, in a low growl that raises every hair on the back of Jaskier’s neck, “And he is _mine_.”

“White Wolf,” comes the chorus from every throat in the hall, agreement and obedience and something Jaskier can only call _fealty_ resonating through the simple words. The White Wolf nods and sits down, letting go of Jaskier’s shoulder, and everyone’s attention goes back to their own dinners and conversations. Jaskier steps back, letting the tall back of Eskel’s chair give him a little cover.

What...what the _fuck_ did the White Wolf mean by that? Jaskier _still_ doesn’t get the impression that the White Wolf intends to take him to his bed - the clasp of the White Wolf’s hand on his shoulder was utterly impersonal, firm enough to hold Jaskier in place and gentle enough not to bruise, and did not linger at all - but to claim Jaskier as _his_ so very...bluntly is hard to give any _other_ interpretation.

The White Wolf leans back in his chair and looks at Jaskier, golden eyes unreadable. “No lute,” he observes quietly.

“Ah, no, um...my lord?” Jaskier says nervously. He has no idea what title he should be using - just calling the man White Wolf as his warriors do seems insufficient - and he doesn’t want to look like he’s trying to make excuses or get Eskel in trouble by trying to explain.

“None in storage,” Eskel says, to Jaskier’s surprise. “Sent a lad down the Trail for one, but it’ll be a day or three.”

“Hm,” says the White Wolf. “Can you sing without one?”

“Yes, my lord,” Jaskier says.

“Hm,” says the White Wolf again, and pushes his chair back a little more. Ciri clambers out of her chair and into his lap, looking up at Jaskier imperiously.

“Sing something with an adventure in it, please!” she says.

“Something with an adventure,” Jaskier says, starting to grin. The White Wolf might terrify him, but it’s hard to be quite as scared of a man holding his daughter in his lap and giving her a fond look of indulgence. Something with an adventure, but suitable for a child… “How about the _Ballad of Maid Marian_?”

“I don’t know that one,” Ciri says, and settles herself more comfortably across her father’s lap. “Go on.” Yennefer stands and drapes herself over the back of the White Wolf’s chair, watching Jaskier expectantly.

Jaskier hums a warm-up note, glances briefly at the White Wolf, who is watching him with an unreadable expression but doesn’t seem to disapprove, and starts to sing, quietly enough that he won’t disturb anyone who doesn’t care to listen. Given a lute and a few hours to practice, he would be perfectly happy to perform for everyone in the hall, but right now he is only trying to please one person: the little princess Ciri, who looks steadily more delighted with every verse he sings.

The _Ballad of Maid Marian_ tells of a young noblewoman who dresses as a boy and runs away to become the finest archer in the land, winning a contest against her lover and making him admit she has defeated him. The version Jaskier is singing is not even _slightly_ bawdy - though there are versions which are - and Maid Marian is bold and clever and heroic, and saves her lover’s life at one point. Jaskier is _better_ with an instrument to keep the tune going, but he can sing without one well enough, even after a month without practice - well enough to delight the young princess, at any rate.

She claps happily when he finishes and gives her a flourishing bow, and then she elbows her father and says, “That was really good, wasn’t it? You have to tell him you liked it, otherwise it’s rude.”

The White Wolf gives her a _very_ fond look and nods to Jaskier. “It was fine,” he says. Jaskier would be mildly offended at the lack of enthusiasm except that he has been getting the distinct impression that the White Wolf isn’t enthusiastic about _anything_ , and ‘fine’ is probably about as lavish as praise from him ever gets.

“Thank you, my lord,” he says, bowing again. “And thank _you_ , my lady.”

Ciri giggles. “I’m not a _lady_ ,” she says.

“Little menace,” Yennefer says, “you _are_ a noble lady, insofar as anyone in this mad pack is noble. Your father’s a king of sorts, after all.”

The White Wolf, interestingly, grimaces. “Ugh,” he says, and Yennefer laughs.

“Might be good to have someone around who knows about court etiquette,” she says. “Not terribly relevant _here_ , of course, but you _do_ talk to various kings and such, and it’s good to know _how_ rude you’re being, right?”

Eskel chuckles. “ _I_ had better learn court etiquette,” he says, turning his chair a little so he can see Jaskier. “Since past experience suggests I’ll be the one doing most of the talking. _Some_ people can get away with just glowering at everyone until they cooperate, but alas, I am not among them.” He grins at the White Wolf, who sighs at him rather more dramatically than Jaskier expected.

He’s _playing along_ , Jaskier realizes suddenly. The White Wolf is being teased, and he’s playing at being irritated, because it amuses his...friends? Allies? Family? Pack?

“Do I _have_ to learn court etiquette?” Ciri asks, peering up into her father’s face.

The White Wolf frowns a little in thought. Jaskier swallows and dares to put his two coppers in. “A lot of court etiquette is learning how to insult people very politely.”

Ciri’s emerald eyes go wide. “ _Really?_ ”

“Oh yes,” Yennefer concurs. “Hm, let me see, it’s been years since I tried to insult someone _politely_.” She looks Jaskier up and down. “I might, perhaps, observe that our bard’s trousers and doublet are such a charmingly _unique_ color combination.”

Jaskier would bristle, but firstly, she’s obviously testing him, and secondly, she still sounds _teasing_. The test isn’t just whether he can take a barb, it’s whether he’s worth being part of this camaraderie. “It’s the newest fashion at Oxenfurt, my dear,” he says as unctuously as he can, and then puts a hand over his mouth in exaggerated dismay. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I had forgot you’ve been in the _country_ these last few years.”

Yennefer bursts into delighted laughter. “Little flower has teeth!” she chortles. “See, cub, that’s how you insult people politely.”

Ciri is looking at both of them wide-eyed. Eskel is snorting laughter behind a muffling hand. And the White Wolf...well, he’s not smiling, exactly, but there are crinkles at the corners of his eyes that suggest he _would_ be smiling if he weren’t so devoted to keeping a glower constantly on his handsome face. “I want to learn to do that,” Ciri breathes, and Jaskier gives her a full court bow, all flourishes and grace.

“Then I will be honored to teach my lady,” he says, and she giggles at him and hops off her father’s lap and tries to imitate his bow.

Jaskier spends the rest of the evening teaching a very small princess how to do a proper court bow, with a sorceress laughing at both of them and Eskel giving utterly unhelpful suggestions and the White Wolf watching them, golden-eyed and unreadable. Unreadable, that is, until Ciri gets her bow utterly perfect and turns to see if her father approves, and he gives her a tiny smile and a slow nod that makes her light up and bounce on her toes in glee.

“You’re a good teacher,” she informs Jaskier. “You can be my tutor. I won’t scare you off like I did the last one.”

“...Oh?” Jaskier asks. “And what did you do to the _last_ one, my lady?”

He is utterly flabbergasted when it’s the _White Wolf_ who says, voice warm with amusement, “Probably better you don’t know.”

Jaskier gives the White Wolf his very best innocent expression. “But then how will I know what to be wary of, my lord?”

“Just look out for toads,” the White Wolf says, still warmly amused, and stands, gathering Ciri up. She wriggles like a snake, and ends up dangling from the White Wolf’s outstretched arm, her arms and legs wrapped around it and her head hanging down. The White Wolf sighs at her, fond and exasperated, and heads for a door at the head of the hall - not the office door, but one half-hidden in the shadows. Jaskier tries to imagine how much strength it takes to hold a squirming nine-year-old child up on one arm without even showing the _effort_ , and is reminded yet again that he is currently in the White Wolf’s keep, and for some unfathomable reason, the White Wolf continues to be…

Kind.

This is _not_ what Jaskier expected.

“I’ll walk you up to your rooms,” Yennefer says. “If you’re going to be tutoring Ciri, we’ll have to work out a schedule.”

“Are you also teaching her?” Jaskier asks, falling in beside her obediently.

“She’s going to be the most powerful sorceress in millennia,” Yennefer says, grinning fiercely. “She’s going to be _magnificent_.”

Jaskier nods. He’s not quite sure what to say to that. “What schedule do you currently keep for her lessons?” he asks, instead of trying to figure out how to react to learning that his new pupil is a budding sorceress.

By the time they reach Jaskier’s new rooms, they’ve hashed out at least a tentative schedule for Ciri’s lessons - which include not just sorcery but swordplay, as she is apparently getting much the same training young Witchers do - and Yennefer appears to have decided that Jaskier is somewhere between an amusing new toy and a pleasing new ally.

She claps him on the shoulder and leaves him at the door to his rooms with a wicked grin and a single tidbit of advice: “Witchers respect courage. Stand your ground, little flower, and you’ll be fine.”


	3. Chapter 3

Jaskier wakes the next morning feeling...a lot better than he has in the last month, actually. The bed is very comfortable - well-stuffed and warmly blanketed - and the thick stone walls of the keep mean that no noise has disturbed his sleep. He could _definitely_ use a bath, though.

He gathers a change of clothes and a swatch of toweling he finds in the chest at the foot of his bed, and ventures out into the corridors, spotting a lad in the same plain clothing as yesterday’s helper after only a few moments. The lad directs him to a staircase which leads all the way down to the hot springs, and adds the useful information that the Witchers will all be on the practice fields or out hunting until at least midmorning, so if Jaskier is quick, he’ll have the hot springs mostly to himself.

The hot springs are astonishing, actually. Jaskier doesn’t know what he was expecting, but a vast cavern, wreathed in steam, containing a long series of linked pools of clear, slightly pungent water, is a lot more impressive than he expected. There are a few people splashing about - men and women both, without any attempt to separate the sexes - and one of the women waves to him. Jaskier goes over and gives her his very best friendly smile.

“You’re the bard, hey?” says the woman, and gestures to the water. Jaskier thinks she might be the woman who was seated at the Wolf table last night; she has curly chestnut hair and bright blue eyes, and a cheerful grin. “C’mon in, we’re not fussy about formality here. I’m Triss. You’re Jaskier, right?”

“I am, and honored to meet you,” Jaskier says, bowing like he’s at court and then stripping off his sleeping clothes and sliding into the water. It’s just short of too hot, and feels absolutely _amazing_.

“Hottest water up at that end, coldest down the other way,” Triss says. “Most unmodified humans don’t go any higher than this pool, but the Witchers like the really hot end.”

Jaskier nods his thanks. “I think I shall stay here or a little lower,” he allows. “This is lovely, but any hotter and I shall begin to wonder if I have been turned into a lobster.” There might be a comic song in there somewhere - _The Song of the Lobster_ , or something like that? _Oh me, oh my, the lobster cried, the water’s getting hotter_ -

Oh, it feels _good_ to have lyrics starting to bubble up again. There’s a scrap of tune, too; he’ll have to write it down as soon as possible. He should see about getting a little folding slate to carry about with him the way he used to do at Oxenfurt, to scribble things down.

Triss giggles. “Well, you shan’t find any arguments from the _sensible_ inhabitants of the keep, I assure you. What brings you to Kaer Morhen all the way from _Redania_?”

Jaskier hesitates. Apparently, for some reason he genuinely can’t imagine, the handful of people who know that he was sent here as tribute have not been spreading that knowledge around. “King Vizimir sent me,” he says at last, “as a token of his respect for the White Wolf.”

“As an attempt to placate him, you mean,” Triss says, grinning rather wolfishly herself. “Smart of him to figure we needed a bard.”

Jaskier smiles and nods, because that is _not_ why he was chosen, but if people want to put that interpretation on it, he’s not going to complain. “And what an opportunity!” he says instead. “No one else is writing songs of the White Wolf’s exploits yet - not from _this_ side, anyhow. I’m frankly astonished there aren’t half a hundred bards already here.”

“I think Geralt scared a couple off, years ago, and the word spread,” Triss says, leaning back against the smooth edge of the pool and closing her eyes in contentment. “Good on you for not running like a startled fawn last night.”

“My knees were too wobbly,” Jaskier confesses, and Triss laughs.

“Eh, they’re not so bad, Witchers,” she says. “I won’t say they _don’t_ bite, but usually only people who are really _asking_ for it.”

“Unfortunately, I have a knack for annoying people,” Jaskier says, finding a bar of fairly nice soap tucked onto a little ledge to one side and starting to wash.

“Eh, you’re Geralt’s,” Triss says, as casually as if the statement is nothing to worry about. “Nobody else will mess with you, and he’s harder to rile than you’d think. Just don’t be stupid enough to try to hurt Ciri.”

“I’d rather cut my own hand off,” Jaskier says, quite honestly. Hurt a _child_? Never.

“Then you’ll be fine,” Triss says, and lapses into silence. Jaskier finishes washing, thinking hard.

_You’re Geralt’s. Nobody else will mess with you._ That puts a bit of a different complexion on being claimed so publicly. If the White Wolf was trying to _protect_ him…

That’s very, very interesting, especially as Jaskier hadn’t done anything to warrant that sort of protection. Still hasn’t, though perhaps being Ciri’s tutor will go some way towards earning himself a place that isn’t purely based on the White Wolf’s suffrance.

“Have you any tales that would make good songs?” he asks Triss when she sits up and levers herself out of the water, reaching for a towel. He also admires the view, because she is a _very_ lovely woman, but politely. He doesn’t want to piss off someone who is willing to be friendly with him.

“Oh, plenty,” Triss says. “Tell you what, come find me this afternoon sometime - I’ll be in the stillroom - and I’ll tell you about the siege of Ard Carraigh.”

“Thank you!” Jaskier says, beaming. That sounds like _exactly_ the sort of story the court bard of the White Wolf ought to immortalize in song. Triss gives him a friendly nod and wraps her towel around herself and wanders off towards an antechamber that looks to be rather less full of steam, and Jaskier finishes washing and does the same, finding that the antechamber is both large and - somehow - steam-free, which does make getting dressed easier. There’s even a large sheet of polished bronze hung on one wall to use as a mirror, something Jaskier did _not_ expect in a keep full of warriors. On the other hand, there are at least two sorceresses here, so it might not be for the warriors at all.

There’s breakfast laid out in the great hall - bread and porridge and leftover venison and hot tea and a surprising amount of fruit - and Jaskier piles a plate and retreats to the end of the Wolf table, which is mostly empty. A couple of the other humans in the hall - there are no Witchers present - give him polite nods, and he nods back and smiles as winningly as he knows how.

After breakfast he stops one of the servants and asks where the princess’s rooms are, and after a brief moment of confusion the man laughs and says, “Oh, the cub! Suppose she is a princess, at that, or something like it,” and points Jaskier to the appropriate stairway.

Ciri’s rooms are at the very top of the tower: the most defensible point, if Kaer Morhen were ever to be attacked. The stairway is narrow and winding, and Jaskier is willing to bet that two Witchers could hold the tower against a hundred assailants.

Ciri opens the door when he knocks, and bounces with glee at the sight of him. “Are we going to learn to be rude today?”

“Unfortunately, first we need to learn to be polite,” Jaskier says, and Ciri wrinkles her nose at him.

“Oh _fine_ ,” she says, and pulls him in, pushing him into a chair beside the desk and perching on the other chair beside him. “Papa says you have to help me with my maths, too, and history, and geography. Blech!”

“Well, history’s just a bunch of stories,” Jaskier says, smiling down at her. “And geography’s about where those stories _were_. Maths...well, if you want to lead armies, you’ll need to be able to do maths.”

“I’m going to be one of Papa’s captains when I’m grown,” Ciri says, frowning adorably. “Alright, you can teach me maths, I guess.”

Jaskier chuckles and leans back in his chair. “Tell you what, how’s about you tell me what you know already, and we can go from there?”

Ciri lights up and starts talking fast enough it’s hard to keep up with, and Jaskier jots down notes and nods and makes encouraging noises. She’s a very bright child, is the White Wolf’s daughter, and her previous tutor - or possibly Yennefer - gave her a good grounding in reading and writing and maths, but she’s got little history and less geography, and her grasp of court etiquette is roughly nonexistent.

Well, Jaskier’s never been afraid of a challenge, and as long as he can keep his lessons entertaining, he hopefully won’t have to worry about toads.

*

Ciri tows him down to the great hall for lunch, and to Jaskier’s dismay insists that he sit next to her, only two seats down from the White Wolf’s chair. He attempts to make a court etiquette lesson out of the argument - bards don’t usually sit at the high table at _all_ , and certainly not at the princess’s left hand! - but Ciri just frowns at him, looking rather startlingly like her father, and says, “ _I_ want you here. This isn’t some silly southern court.”

Jaskier is trying to find the right words to argue with that when Yennefer leans over the back of Ciri’s chair and says, mock-mournfully, “Replacing me already, little menace?”

“Never, Aunt Yen!” Ciri says, which startles Jaskier a bit. He’d been assuming - rather foolishly, it appears - that Yennefer was Ciri’s mother.

“Let the poor bard eat in peace,” Yennefer says, nudging Jaskier to retreat. “You can tell me everything you’ve been doing this morning, hm?”

“ _Fine_ ,” says Ciri, rather huffily, and Jaskier mouths _Thank you_ to Yennefer and slips quietly down to the end of the table. Just in time, too: the large doors at the end of the hall bang open and a flood of Witchers pours in, most of them clearly just out of the baths, wet-haired and in many cases shirtless, all of them laughing and shoving at each other and making a quite impressive ruckus. To Jaskier’s mild amazement, the White Wolf is among his warriors, just as disheveled and damp, with one of Eskel’s arms thrown around his shoulders. Eskel is laughing. The White Wolf is _almost_ utterly expressionless - except for the very slight crinkle at the corners of his eyes that Jaskier only sees as the pack of wolf Witchers reaches the head table.

Learning to read the White Wolf is going to take some time, Jaskier suspects, and a lot of attention to _very_ small shifts of expression. It seems like the only time the White Wolf truly shows his emotions easily enough for anyone to read is when he is with his daughter.

...Said daughter is telling her father _something_ while gesturing excitedly with her table knife, and the White Wolf bends his head to listen to her with an indulgent half-smile.

Dinner is apparently not as formal a meal as supper is; everyone sits without looking at the White Wolf for permission. The food is still plain but good, and Aubry is still taciturn, and Jaskier spends the meal watching Witchers and human warriors eat really _remarkable_ amounts of food. Jaskier is going to have to watch their training at some point, if it generates such astonishing appetites.

Dinner is also a much _shorter_ meal; the Witchers finish their food and get up again almost immediately, going off in clumps together to do...whatever warriors do in the afternoon. Yennefer takes Ciri off with her, presumably for sorcery lessons, and the White Wolf and Eskel and the old Witcher whose name Jaskier still hasn’t caught go into the office behind the throne together. Jaskier spots Triss getting up and hastens to finish his ale and follow her.

“Come along,” she says, giving him a cheerful glance as he catches her just before a doorway, and leads the way not up but down, through a long corridor and a narrow staircase to a room built into the mountainside, with narrow slit windows that let in cool air and bright sunlight. It’s a very _large_ stillroom, with several long tables and a broad fireplace, and Jaskier picks a corner where he’s not likely to knock over any of the remarkable array of distilling equipment. Triss sets about doing incomprehensible things with a number of herbs and other..objects, most of which Jaskier can’t name.

“How’d your morning with the little menace go?” she asks, glancing over at Jaskier, who has been distracted by the possibility of a verse involving potions bubbling like the hot springs below.

“Very well, I think,” Jaskier says. “She’s a bright little thing.”

“So she is,” Triss says, grinning. “Sharp as a sword. Think you can keep up with her?”

“I can certainly try,” Jaskier says. “She’s not much like her father.” He’s fishing, a bit too obviously, and Triss’s grin gets sharper.

“She’s just as fierce,” she says, a warning Jaskier intends to take to heart.

“Good to know,” he says. “And speaking of fierce - you said you’d tell me about the siege of Ard Carraigh?”

“So I did,” Triss says, and pauses to measure a foul-smelling black liquid carefully. It sizzles as it hits the clay beaker. “It was the first siege the White Wolf’s army ever attempted, though obviously not the last.”

Jaskier nods. “I...have heard conflicting accounts of what precipitated the White Wolf’s decision to conquer the northlands.”

Triss snorts. “Conflicting, hm? That’s a very diplomatic way of saying that nobody wants to admit they _know_ why Geralt decided to turn warlord. What do you know about Witchers, bard?”

“They are stronger and faster and have keener senses than normal humans, age more slowly and heal more swiftly, and have some ability to do magic,” Jaskier says. “Or at least, that’s what most of the tales agree on. The _older_ stories, from before the White Wolf began his campaigns, claim that Witchers were created to guard men from monsters.”

“Oh, well remembered!” Triss says. “That’s it precisely. Now, for a long time, Witchers stayed well out of politics.” Jaskier’s eyebrows go up: conquering Kaedwen and Caingorn and two-thirds of Redania and the top half of Aedirn, with obvious plans to keep going once the current conquests have been digested, doesn’t seem like staying out of politics to _him_. “As I understand it,” Triss continues, “Geralt was out hunting monsters, and ran across some of the victims of the last king of Kaedwen. Have you heard of him?”

“I’ve heard...rumors,” Jaskier admits. They weren’t _nice_ rumors, either. The sort of things you can’t talk about with children around. The sort of things that...well, that get kings overthrown, if they’re stupid enough to do them to _nobles_ rather than peasants. Or even just to too _many_ peasants.

“Apparently - and I wasn’t here for this, mind you, this is just what I’ve heard from those who _were_ here - Geralt came back to Kaer Morhen that winter and asked a question. ‘We kill monsters. What about the ones that are shaped like men?’”

Jaskier’s eyes go wide. If there were ever words _meant_ for a song - oh, he can work with _this_. He can make a whole damn _song cycle_ with this. _The White Wolf spake to the whole wolf pack, shrewd were his words and wise - ‘For we are meant to monsters slay, in fair or foul guise’_ \- oh yes, there’s enough here to give him inspiration for _years_.

Triss shrugs. “I’m told they spent the whole winter debating it, and then sent out word to all the _other_ Witcher schools to come and discuss it, and then I’m told there were some...well, duels is a little too polite. Really vicious single combats, and a couple of brawls. And at the end of it, there was a Witcher army, and their first target was the king of Kaedwen.”

“Who holed up in Ard Carraigh and closed the gates,” Jaskier supplies.

“Yep,” Triss says. “Guess he thought Witchers couldn’t actually besiege a city.”

“I’ve never heard how Ard Carraigh actually fell,” Jaskier says. He knows it _did_ \- he was not very old at the time, but he remembers the way the news went through the noble houses of Redania like wildfire, how all the adults started clustering together and muttering worriedly.

Triss turns and lounges back against the table and grins. “So I wasn’t there for it, obviously, but I got this straight from Eskel. They concentrated their main forces at the gates, and pretended they were settling in for a proper siege - got mocked, too, since they didn’t have any siege equipment or anything. And then after three nights, Geralt and Eskel and Lambert and a couple of Witchers from the other schools went over the walls very quietly, made it all the way into the palace, captured the king, dragged him back _out_ of the city, and beheaded him in front of the main gates that morning.”

Jaskier gapes. That’s the most efficient - and, oddly, most bloodless - method of ending a siege he’s ever heard of. “So they opened the gates,” he says.

“Yep. Vesemir and some of the other more patient Witchers spent a while going through records and finding the people who’d helped the king do horrid things, and executed them too, and then they found someone who could promise to be a _better_ ruler without lying or pissing himself, and went off...and found out that the new ruler considered himself Geralt’s vassal. Apparently Geralt panicked and went off into the wilderness for a week when he got the first wagon of tribute.”

Jaskier blinks at her. “Quick question: Vesemir?”

“The old Witcher who sits near Geralt at dinner,” Triss says. “He was the teacher for the Wolf School; now he’s one of the White Wolf’s main advisors.”

“Gotcha,” Jaskier says, and hums thoughtfully. “I think whatever song I end up writing will _not_ include the White Wolf panicking at being given tribute.” He’s certainly gotten more used to it by now - but then, the fall of Ard Carraigh was fifteen years ago. Hm. _Through the halls of Ard Carraigh the White Wolf sought his prey / the king whose monstrous appetites had earned a Witcher’s ire / and there before the gates he brought the monster to his fate_ …needs some work, but there’s a tune there, Jaskier can work with this. Something about the White Wolf’s unwillingness to shed innocent blood, perhaps?

Triss chuckles. “Probably wise,” she agrees. “He _does_ have a sense of humor, but…”

Jaskier nods. He’s written rude songs about various nobles of Redania, but none of them had the actual power of life and death over him, and until he has a better outline of what the White Wolf will and won’t tolerate from a bard, he’s going to be very careful about stepping over that line. “What did they send?”

“Oh, food, wine, gold, silk, the usual sort of placate-the-warlord stuff. We get a wagonload about once a month from one city or another, these days.” Triss shrugs. “Sometimes they send horses. Everyone’s just sort of guessing at what Geralt might want.”

And some of them guess better than others, Jaskier thinks, with a certain bitterness. The nobles of Redania, for instance, guessed _wrong_. Though it’s worked out...really astonishingly well thus far. It’s only been a day - fuck, it’s only been a _day_ since Jaskier followed Eskel into the White Wolf’s den - but instead of being savaged, Jaskier has been given work suited to his talents, and the protection of the White Wolf himself, and the tentative friendship - no, perhaps better to say merely _alliance_ thus far - of the young princess and two sorceresses and Eskel.

Actually, when he lays it all out like that, he’s doing quite astonishingly well for himself.

There’s something gloriously ironic - and more than a little painful - about the idea that a castle full of Witchers can see more value in Jaskier than his own family can.

“Right,” Jaskier says, because following that train of thought any further is just going to end in tears. “I am _definitely_ going to write a song about the siege of Ard Carraigh - come to think of it, that would be the perfect start to a song cycle about the rise of the White Wolf - but for now, can I help you with anything, since you’ve given me so much help?”

“Come chop this,” Triss says, giving him an approving little nod, and Jaskier spends the rest of the afternoon chopping herbs and...other things he doesn’t really want to name...into small pieces, and watching Triss do incomprehensible things with distilling equipment, and humming to himself as he tries out melodies. A song cycle needs a through-line - ooh, a tune specifically for the White Wolf, to be worked in whenever he shows up - something catchy but a little ominous, perhaps? Something that makes the listener feel a little awe, a little fear. Like being caught by golden eyes.

Well. If Jaskier ever manages to convey how it feels to be looked at by those golden eyes and then _not_ eaten, in music, that song will make him famous forever.

*

Supper is just as cheerful and rowdy that night as it was the first night. Jaskier isn’t expecting to be summoned to the White Wolf’s side again - surely that was a one-time thing - but he has reckoned without Ciri. The princess clambers into her father’s lap again once they’ve both finished eating, and says something in his ear, and the White Wolf looks down the long table at Jaskier and gives that same little beckoning motion with his head, and Jaskier, of course, obeys.

“Will you sing another song?” Ciri asks when he stops beside the White Wolf’s chair. “I really liked the one you sang yesterday.”

“It would be my pleasure,” Jaskier assures her. “What sort of song would you like tonight? Or you, my lord?”

The White Wolf gives him a completely unreadable look and hums noncommittally. Jaskier has no idea what that means. A preference? A lack of preference? A complete disinterest in music?

“Give us a love song,” Yennefer says, shifting over to sit in Ciri’s chair and leaning one elbow on the table, chin in her hand. “I haven’t heard a good love song since we left Aretuza.”

“Happy ending? Sad ending?” Jaskier checks.

“Happy,” Ciri says firmly. “I don’t like the sad endings.”

“One love song with a happy ending for my ladies,” Jaskier says, and picks _The Passionate Shepherd_ because despite the title it’s not even a _little_ bit bawdy, and is therefore fit for little princess ears.

It’s also got a good catchy chorus, and Jaskier is absolutely _flabbergasted_ \- though not, thankfully, enough to throw him off his tune - when Eskel and Yennefer join in on the second iteration. They both have decent, if untrained, voices. Ciri joins in on the third chorus, and that’s enough, apparently, to make Triss wander down from her seat and lean on the back of Yennefer’s chair to listen, and when Jaskier looks around as subtly as he can, he sees old Vesemir tapping the beat on the side of his ale mug, a handful of other wolf Witchers clearly listening and enjoying themselves, even prickly Lambert grinning at the occasional very subtle double entendres in the lyrics. The only person who _doesn’t_ seem to be enjoying himself is the White Wolf…

Or at least, that’s what Jaskier thinks until he finishes the song and Ciri starts to applaud, with Yennefer and Triss joining her a moment later and Eskel and Vesemir deigning to add a few claps, and the White Wolf gives Jaskier a nod and a low, gruff hum that - if Jaskier hasn’t _completely_ lost the ability to read people - is almost certainly _approval_.

“Another!” Ciri chirps. “Please?”

“What would you like?” Jaskier asks. He’s happy to keep singing as long as he’s allowed - it may be a small audience, but they’re appreciative, which is all a bard really wants, after all.

“You pick,” Ciri says, lounging back against her father’s chest with an imperious little wave, and the White Wolf actually _chuckles_ , ducking his head to press a soft kiss to her pale hair.

Jaskier considers his audience and chooses a comic song, one about two sets of lovers who get lost in a forest and follow the wrong people and fall in love and out of love and back in love again while the Fey Folk watch and laugh.

His little audience applauds again when he finishes - actually, almost a quarter of the Wolf table applauds, Jaskier is genuinely startled - but the White Wolf frowns a little. “They aren’t like that,” he says.

“...Who aren’t?” Jaskier asks warily.

“Fey Folk,” the White Wolf says. “They don’t play _nice_ jokes.”

That might be the most words the White Wolf has said to Jaskier at any one time. “Ah,” Jaskier says. “Artistic license?”

“Hm,” says the White Wolf.

“They could be elves,” Ciri says. “Elves are nice.”

Elves, Jaskier knows, are protected in the lands held by the White Wolf. So are dwarves and other nonhuman folk. A large number of elven refugees have taken advantage of that promise of protection, and there are - so Jaskier has heard - several thriving communities in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, close enough to Kaer Morhen that even particularly stupid bigots will not dare venture to attempt to break the White Wolf’s law.

“I could replace Fey with elves easily enough, I suppose,” he says. Most lines would still scan, and he can fudge the ones that don’t.

“Hm,” says the White Wolf, but he nods, and Jaskier makes a mental note to re-write the song as soon as he has ten minutes and a scrap of parchment.

“Another song, my lord?” he asks.

The White Wolf shakes his head and stands, Ciri cradled in his arms. “Cubs need their sleep,” he says, half to Jaskier and half to a pouting Ciri, and leaves the hall, brushing past Jaskier close enough that Jaskier can feel the more-than-human warmth of him.

“ _I_ want another song,” Eskel says. “Give us something bawdy, bard, now that the cub’s off to bed.”

“Ooh, _The Saucy Tavern-Maid_ ,” Yennefer says, grinning. “I haven’t heard that one in years.”

Jaskier laughs and launches into the song, and by the end of it, almost half the Wolf table is bellowing the chorus along with him, the _crack_ of their hands clapping the beat better than a bass drum. It’s so _good_ , getting to perform and being _appreciated_ , being welcomed - it’s far headier than the ale, more intoxicating than even the finest spirits Jaskier has ever had.

“You’re good, bard,” Eskel says when the applause is over. “I’ll have that lute for you soon.”

“Thank you,” Jaskier says, beaming with the overflowing joy of a successful performance. “I’m even _better_ with a lute.”

“I believe you,” Eskel says, laughing. Jaskier laughs, too. Nothing is funny, but - he’s alive, he’s performing, he’s _wanted_ here, even if he was dumped on their doorstep unexpectedly, and it’s the best feeling, like warm sunshine in his veins.

Like a piercing, golden gaze.


	4. Chapter 4

Jaskier’s days fall into a pattern, and to his surprise, it’s a pleasant one. He spends his mornings working with Ciri, who is bright and enthusiastic and energetic, and he has to work hard to keep her interested, but when he does, she excels. His afternoons are given over either to composing or to helping Triss in the stillroom while she tells him stories of the White Wolf’s exploits or to pestering anyone who looks friendly for stories - and a surprising number of people, Witchers and humans alike, seem to take pleasure in indulging him. Almost every evening, he’s summoned to the White Wolf’s side to sing for Ciri, and after the White Wolf takes her off to put her to bed, he sings for the rest of the hall, taking requests from Witchers and sorceresses and human warriors and servants alike. Once he gets a lute, he’s much less shy about making a little noise, and the Witchers seem to like it, if the way they clap along and bellow choruses and demand more songs is any measure of their approval.

He starts to learn the rhythms of life in Kaer Morhen. Groups of Witchers go out every few weeks to roam the lands the White Wolf claims, and return again months later with news of small skirmishes or justice imposed or a new group of refugees settled. Wagons of tribute arrive every month or so and are distributed with astonishing fairness among Witchers and humans alike - even _Jaskier_ comes in for some of the bounty, a handful of bolts of silk cloth and a very nice viol that no one else cares to claim, ink and parchment and a fur cloak that helps a great deal with the bitter cold of a Kaer Morhen winter. Reports come in regularly of trouble - monsters or raids or just humans being stupid - and the White Wolf sends out bands to deal with it or - much more rarely - goes himself. Having sorceresses around is _very_ useful: the Witchers can go to the site of the trouble, or fairly near it, by portal, and often return the same way. And in between, the Witchers practice their weapons and the servants keep food on the table and everything ticks over like a well-made clock. Jaskier finds himself fit into it like another cog - an odd size, perhaps, but one that fits with Ciri and Triss and maybe Yennefer and Eskel and even - possibly - the White Wolf himself.

Because Jaskier spends more time around the White Wolf than he would have expected. He still _eats_ at the end of the high table, but he’s summoned up to the White Wolf’s side nearly every night, and as long as his songs aren’t too inaccurate, the White Wolf seems to put up with them - maybe even to _enjoy_ them. He only gripes when a description of a monster or a battle isn’t correct. Jaskier makes time to corner Eskel or Lambert or any of the other Witchers who will talk to him - there are quite a few, actually, of multiple schools - and ask for details about monsters, and raids the fairly extensive library for more information, so that the corrections grow rarer and the White Wolf’s frown less frequent.

And then there’s the other thing. Jaskier had thought it was a joke, the suggestion that he might end up teaching court etiquette to the White Wolf and his closest advisors, but he’s been in Kaer Morhen about a week when a lad knocks on the door to his rooms in the middle of the afternoon and informs him he’s wanted in the White Wolf’s office. Swallowing apprehension, Jaskier presents himself at the doorway, and Eskel ushers him in with a friendly smile.

“Etiquette,” the White Wolf rumbles from his place leaning against the smaller table. He’s glowering, as usual, but Jaskier doesn’t think it’s because of _him_. “King Vizimir wants to meet. What do we need to know?”

Jaskier thinks that maybe he should feel bad about giving the White Wolf and his inner council a swift course in Redanian etiquette and all the gossip and advice he can remember about the Redanian court - maybe he should feel like he’s betraying his people - but they betrayed him first, and he’s far, far more welcome and valued here in Kaer Morhen than he ever was in Redania. He tells the White Wolf everything he can think of, from King Vizimir’s favorite wines to the feuds among the nobles to the politest way to tell someone to fuck off. The White Wolf listens quietly, golden eyes fixed on Jaskier; Eskel and old Vesemir take notes.

Jaskier doesn’t realize that it was a test until about a week later, when he’s summoned again. “Went to Redania,” the White Wolf says. He looks...less tense, Jaskier realizes. He hadn’t even realized the White Wolf _was_ tense, but there’s a looseness to his shoulders that wasn’t there the last time. “Your advice worked.”

“It did?” Jaskier asks, startled, and then grins. “Of course it did! Did you scare the shit out of everyone, White Wolf? Please tell me you did.”

“Of course he did,” Eskel sighs. “And I got to be the diplomatic one. _Again_. One of these days I’m going to make you do the talking, Wolf.”

“Hm,” says the White Wolf, with a little quirk to his lips. “Unlikely.”

“Bastard,” Eskel grumbles, clearly not meaning it very much.

“Temeria,” the White Wolf says to Jaskier. “What do you know?”

“Um,” Jaskier says, and wracks his brain, and starts talking.

After that he’s summoned every week - regularly enough that he starts expecting it - to talk about court etiquette or noble gossip or just the history of wherever the White Wolf is interested in this time. Sometimes it’s in preparation for a diplomatic excursion - as diplomatic as the White Wolf ever gets, at any rate - sometimes it just seems to be curiosity. Whatever it is, the White Wolf asks his questions and then listens closely to every word Jaskier speaks, golden eyes fixed on the bard. And if the information ends up being useful, the White Wolf _tells_ him so, gives him a nod of approval and a gruff, “Came in handy,” or, “Worked like you said,” that makes Jaskier feel like he’s just won a bardic competition. There’s something deeply intoxicating about having the White Wolf’s attention and approval - about having those golden eyes look right through him and then, each time, away again without burning him to the bone.

Thinking he was about to be killed wasn’t appealing at all, but the _hint_ of threat, when Jaskier is growing ever surer that he isn’t actually in any danger at all, is astonishingly compelling. Jaskier finds himself wanting those golden eyes on him as often as possible - wanting to see if he can coax a smile, even a little one, from those glowering features, or play a song entertaining enough to make the White Wolf clap or laugh or even, if Jaskier is ever unfairly lucky, perhaps sing along.

Jaskier doesn’t want to _tame_ the White Wolf. That would be a very, very stupid dream, and almost certainly end in his untimely and unpleasant death. He just wants to…

Well, he wants to be one of the people who is allowed to tease, to touch, to laugh with the White Wolf and be teased and touched in turn. Yennefer can: she drapes herself over the White Wolf’s shoulder, touches his wrist to get his attention, toys with his hair. Eskel can: he slings his arm over the White Wolf’s shoulders, kicks his ankle when he’s exasperated, arm-wrestles with him for the entertainment of the Wolf table. Ciri, of course, can climb all over her father and hang off his arms and braid flowers into his hair if she cares to.

Jaskier wants...too much, probably, he’s always wanted too much, aimed too high, dreamed too big. He wants to be part of the inner circle, not for the power - what does he want with power? - but because the White Wolf is like a magnet, drawing people in, and Jaskier...Jaskier knows how an iron filing feels, now.

But he’s not an idiot, so he tutors Ciri and sings at supper and gives advice about various courts, and helps Triss and makes friends in the baths and flirts cheerfully with anyone who cares to flirt back, and makes himself a place - not such a bad place, either - in the White Wolf’s halls, and tells himself very firmly to be content.

Really, apart from his growing attraction to the White Wolf - which Jaskier is ignoring as hard as he can - the only problem with living in Kaer Morhen is the celibacy. People will _flirt_ with him, yes, but the Witchers consider him off-limits because the White Wolf claimed him, and the sorceresses are frankly a little intimidating, and it’s just _rude_ to hit on servants, which leaves Jaskier alone with his trusty right hand and a really distressing number of fantasies starring the Warlord of the North and his piercing golden eyes.

Setting that aside, though, Kaer Morhen becomes - well, becomes a _home_ far more quickly than Jaskier would have guessed it could. It’s no Oxenfurt, full of people who speak the same languages of music and academia - though the sorceresses are all quite well-educated, and Kaer Morhen does have a surprisingly good library, albeit mostly on the topics of monsters and how to kill them - but after the first few months, most of the people of Kaer Morhen seem to _like_ Jaskier, to be happy to see him, to enjoy his singing. He feels _welcome_ here, in this great dark castle full of inhuman warriors, far more welcome than he ever did in Lettenhove.

*

It’s been almost a year since Jaskier was brought to Kaer Morhen when the diplomatic envoys from Redania arrive. Jaskier knew they were coming - everyone did, they’re escorting a caravan of tribute from King Vizimir that ought to actually have things the White Wolf _wants_ in it, and while they’re in Kaer Morhen they’re going to be trying to hammer out a treaty that will leave King Vizimir in charge of the third of Redania that he still holds. (Jaskier is only a little nastily smug about the fact that sacrificing him to the White Wolf gained Redania exactly nothing except the White Wolf thinking the nobles of Redania were _utterly_ useless instead of mostly useless - eh, what is Jaskier thinking, he’s a _lot_ nastily smug about that.)

Jaskier has decided that the welcoming supper for the Redanian envoys is the _perfect_ time to debut the newest song in his song cycle. The Witchers have been quite appreciative of his efforts thus far: _The Siege of Ard Carraigh_ got riotous applause, _The Wolf in Caingorn_ got the entire Griffin table up on their feet stomping along, and _The Fall of Hagge_ has been requested eight times since Jaskier first sang it barely a month ago. Even the White Wolf seems to approve of the songs, and once - only once, but such a glorious moment that it’s burned into Jaskier’s memory - Jaskier heard him humming a snatch of the White Wolf theme that runs through all the songs. Clearly, the song cycle - Jaskier’s going to call it _The Wolf Rising_ , maybe, he hasn’t decided yet - is pleasing to his lord, so it’s only right for Jaskier to sing the newest song in it for such honored guests! The fact that the song is _Ghelibol Burning_ , about the destruction of a city which tried to oust all its elven inhabitants and was subsequently burnt to the ground by angry Witchers, and which just _happens_ to be in Redania, is _purely_ a coincidence.

So yes, Jaskier knows the Redanian envoys are coming, and he’s chosen his outfit and his song and taught Ciri how to be as polite as she cares to be and briefed the White Wolf and his inner council on Redanian mores so that _they_ can be as polite as they care to be, and he’s pretty sure he’s ready for this.

That surety drains away as the Redanian envoys walk warily into the hall, and Jaskier sees who leads them.

His father.

Oh _fuck_ no.

Aubry reaches over to grab Jaskier’s forearm. “What’s the matter?” he asks, quietly, under the sound of Eskel making polite diplomatic noises at the envoys.

Jaskier quite likes Aubry, even if the other man is quieter than the fucking White Wolf himself, because Aubry has never been less than kind to him. But this - Aubry, like most of the inhabitants of Kaer Morhen, doesn’t know that Jaskier was sent as tribute. That he was thrown away, a sacrifice that cost nothing, by his own kin. “Nothing,” Jaskier hisses. “Nothing. It’s fine.”

“Your heartbeat kicked up and you reek of fear,” Aubry says, which is more words than Jaskier usually gets out of him in a week. “What’s the matter?”

“...I know one of the envoys,” Jaskier says, hedging the truth carefully. Witchers, he has learned, can smell lies. “We don’t get on.”

“Oh,” Aubry says, and lets go of his arm. To Jaskier’s surprise, he adds, “Don’t worry. You’re the White Wolf’s. Nobody touches you.”

That _is_ surprisingly reassuring, actually. In a ‘who is scarier’ contest, the White Wolf wins against Jaskier’s father without any effort at all. And if Jaskier’s father tossed him away without a second thought, the White Wolf _does_ value him. Maybe not as much as he does his Wolf Witchers or the sorceresses or even the human warriors who have joined his cause, but he _does_ value Jaskier. He does. So fuck the Count de Lettenhove anyhow.

Jaskier’s father introduces himself, and as he bows, Jaskier, watching Eskel and the White Wolf, sees both of them go still. Sees Eskel’s amiable face turn for a split second to stone, and the White Wolf’s glower get just that hair more intimidating. Jaskier’s not the only one who catches that tiny moment, either: all along the high table, the Wolf Witchers grow tense, their friendly banter dying away to a quiet watchfulness. The head of their pack is, for some reason, displeased by the envoys. So is his right hand man. Therefore, _something_ is wrong.

Jaskier’s father doesn’t seem to notice the rising tension. He reads out the letter King Vizimir has sent, all diplomatic fluff and folderol, and Eskel leads the little crowd of envoys to a table that has been brought in especially for them, between the high table and the rest of the hall. The White Wolf refused to displace any of his usual tablemates to seat the diplomats, and though Jaskier pointed out how rude that was going to be, he’s bitterly grateful now. His father is seated facing away from him, which is also an unexpected boon.

The food is, as always, both simple and delicious. Jaskier can see that the envoys are taken back by everything - the simplicity, the tastiness, the fact that the White Wolf eats the same food as his warriors, the rowdiness of the Witchers at their long tables, the presence of Ciri in her seat at the White Wolf’s left hand. Rumors of the White Wolf’s daughter don’t leave the fortress. Jaskier takes care never to even _hint_ at her presence in his songs. She’s been the best kept secret of Kaer Morhen, protected not just by walls and Witchers but by silence.

Now, of course, the Redanian envoys have seen her, and her hair and her place at the White Wolf’s side make her true identity unmistakeable. Jaskier gives it a month after the envoys return home before the first marriage offers start arriving. The White Wolf’s daughter is a prize beyond price. He warned the White Wolf and Ciri both about the possibility, back when they first heard the envoys were on their way.

“Anyone can _ask_ ,” the White Wolf had growled. “Ciri marries when she likes, who she likes, and anyone who _doesn’t_ like it can meet my swords.”

It’s probably going to take some very blunt rejections for the kings and dukes and emperors of the world to figure out that the White Wolf _means_ that, but Jaskier has every faith that Ciri will grow up wild and free, and marry when and as she pleases, with her terrifying father - and her father’s terrifying army - to protect her. Not to mention her _own_ rather startling abilities, both with a blade and with magic; she has come on in leaps and bounds this past year, and even Yennefer seems a little taken aback at Ciri’s growing powers, while the Witchers who train her speak admiringly of her speed and agility and ruthlessness with a blade. She’s as safe - as well-defended - as any princess can be.

The meal ends far too soon. The White Wolf turns and looks down the long table at Jaskier, and to Jaskier’s blank surprise, instead of a summons, there’s a question in those golden eyes, clear enough that Jaskier can almost hear the words: _Can you do this?_

Ye gods, the White Wolf _cares_. Jaskier swallows and puts his mug down and nods sharply. He _will_ do this. He’s going to get up and sing about the burning of Ghelibol right in his father’s damned _face_ , and his father is going to have to clap and make approving noises, because Jaskier is the White Wolf’s bard, under the White Wolf’s protection, and _nobody_ touches him.

He stands and grabs his lute off the back of the chair and slings it over his chest, and as he strikes a chord the whole hall goes silent - the Witchers in anticipatory pleasure, the envoys in what sure as hell looks like shock. Jaskier holds his head high and saunters out into the middle of the hall and starts to sing. He puts his whole heart into it, concentrates utterly on the words, on the melody, on catching the eye of each Witcher he passes so that everyone in the audience feels like he’s singing to _them_ specifically, so that the Witchers square their shoulders and sit a little taller at the reminder of their past heroics. He finishes the last chorus standing right in front of the high table, squarely before the White Wolf’s seat, and turns and bows deeply to the White Wolf, his back to the envoys, pretending he cannot see the daggered looks they are throwing at him. Pretending he doesn’t know them at all.

The warriors of Kaer Morhen applaud uproariously. The White Wolf deigns to nod, but Jaskier, after a year of learning his expressions, can see the amusement in the creases around his eyes, the worry in the slight downturn of his mouth. Jaskier grins at him - not his best grin, but good enough to fool _almost_ anyone - and retreats back to his seat at the end of the table.

There are other exhibitions after his song: a group of human warriors doing a fast-paced and energetic dance, two Witchers sparring up and down one of the long tables, never putting a foot wrong despite the plates and cups littering the surface, Yennefer and Triss summoning an illusion of a greater dragon to swoop through the hall. Jaskier claps and cheers with everyone else, and tries very hard to pretend he’s not paying any attention to the envoys.

He retreats to his rooms as soon as the formal entertainment is over, though, and for the first time since he came to Kaer Morhen, he locks the door to his bedroom before he collapses onto the bed.

His _father_. Fuck. Jaskier’s not entirely sure how he’s going to deal with this. With a little luck, though, he won’t have to. The Count de Lettenhove won’t be welcome anywhere near Ciri’s lessons, and if Jaskier eats dinner down in the kitchen with the servants - which he _has_ done before, usually when he was in the middle of composing and needed to not be distracted by loud Witchers - and spends his afternoons helping Triss...with a little luck, he can stay entirely out of the envoys’ way except during supper, and they won’t dare approach him while he’s at the high table, nor interrupt him while he’s singing. If he slips away immediately after singing, he’ll be _fine_.

It works for three days, which is better than Jaskier had really expected. But on the fourth day, Triss sends him up to get something from the pantry at the same time as the diplomatic talks take their midafternoon break, and Jaskier, taking a shortcut through the main hall, comes face to face with his father.

“Julian,” his father says. Jaskier squares his shoulders and braces himself for the coming nastiness.

“Count de Lettenhove,” he replies, as coldly as he can. The man gave up any right to be called _Father_ when he sent Jaskier into the White Wolf’s jaws without even _hesitating_. That Jaskier wasn’t devoured was pure luck, not any virtue of his father’s brilliance.

“You’re doing well,” his father says slowly, eyeing Jaskier’s outfit: fine silk from the tribute wagons, well-made and expensive; new boots from the same source; rings on his fingers that Ciri has insisted look better on him than on her.

“So I am,” Jaskier says. “No thanks to you.”

“It was our family’s duty to make such a sacrifice,” his father says, puffing up as though to impress Jaskier with his importance. Jaskier, who has spent hours every week facing the White Wolf, finds it a lot less intimidating than he used to.

“Duty,” he says, thoughtfully. “So it certainly wasn’t because you wanted to get rid of a...how did you put it? ‘Useless layabout of a lute-strummer’?”

The Count de Lettenhove harrumphs. “Certainly not!” he snaps.

“Just a word of advice,” Jaskier says. The hair on the back of his neck is rising, which means that the White Wolf is somewhere nearby. Jaskier doesn’t look around. “Witchers can tell if you’re lying.”

“Balderdash,” his father sputters. “Now look, boy. You’re Redanian. You owe a duty to your king - to your family! I expect you at the rooms we’ve been given after supper tonight - you’ll be telling us everything we need to know about this Warlord.”

“Will I,” Jaskier says softly. “A duty, hm? To the people who sacrificed me to the White Wolf?”

“To your kin and your king!” his father says. “And you’ll do it, if you know what’s good for you, boy.”

_There’s_ the threat - and, as Jaskier had not quite dared to expect, there’s the White Wolf, stepping out of the shadows to stand beside Jaskier, one hand on Jaskier’s shoulder, just as they stood a year ago before the hall of Witchers, Jaskier’s first night in Kaer Morhen.

“If you lay a hand upon him, I will cut it off,” the White Wolf says, quiet voice so rich in menace it’s nearly a snarl. The Count de Lettenhove staggers backwards in shock and dismay. “You gave him to me,” the White Wolf adds, even more softly, somehow even more menacingly. Jaskier is frankly impressed: this is a _bardic_ level of vocal skill, one he didn’t know the White Wolf possessed! “He is _mine_.”

This time, Jaskier has absolutely no qualms about being claimed as the White Wolf’s. He grins at his father, bright and merry and cruel. “You gave me away,” he says. “You can hardly complain if my loyalty now lies with a far finer king than Redania’s.”

The Count de Lettenhove sputters. The White Wolf cuts him off with a low growl. “Go,” he says, an order and a threat, and Jaskier’s father, _finally_ registering how much danger he is in, goes stark white and flees the room.

“Thank you,” Jaskier says when the door has closed behind his father.

The White Wolf lets go of his shoulder and shrugs a little. “Can’t let anyone mess with my bard,” he says, and Jaskier finds himself grinning, bright and happy. _My bard_. A claim as sure as sunrise, and one Jaskier never expected to hear.

He doesn’t bother trying to hide for the rest of the time the envoys are in Kaer Morhen. He meets their eyes squarely and he _grins_ , because he is the White Wolf’s bard and if they lay hands on him, they’ll lose those hands.

He’s pretty sure that if it wasn’t done when he was sent off to be sacrificed to the White Wolf, his name will _definitely_ be stricken from the family books now. Julian Alfred Pankratz is as good as dead to his kin.

Well, to hell with that. He’s Jaskier of Kaer Morhen, tutor to the princess Ciri, bard to the White Wolf, and anyone who doesn’t like that can _choke_ on it.


	5. Chapter 5

The White Wolf summons Jaskier the day after the Redanian envoys _finally_ leave, and when Jaskier presents himself in the office, to his surprise, Eskel spreads a heap of parchment out on the large table, and the White Wolf rumbles, “The treaty they brought. Look it over. Any traps?”

Jaskier has to admit he’s _utterly_ flattered by the level of trust being demonstrated - for his loyalty to the White Wolf, and for his intelligence and political instincts too. He leans over the table and examines each page very carefully, on the lookout for weasel-worded clauses or diplomatic double-talk or complicated lawyerese, and on the third page of the proposed treaty, he finds the first - though not, he suspects, the only - potential problem.

“Here,” he says to the Witchers, who both lean over his shoulders to look. The White Wolf’s breath is warm on the side of Jaskier’s throat. “If you sign this, there’ll be a dozen Redanian noblewomen here to court you as soon as their horses can get here, and you’ll have to reject every possible lady in Redania before you can look elsewhere for a consort.”

“Not looking for a consort,” the White Wolf rumbles.

“They’d come even with how scared everyone is of our Wolf?” Eskel asks, sounding rather surprised. “Every envoy in that group reeked of fear the whole time they were here.”

Jaskier snorts. “For a chance to bag the Warlord? There are _plenty_ of noble ladies who will douse themselves in enough perfume that you won’t be able to smell the fear.”

“Still reeks,” the White Wolf grumbles, and takes up a quill to scratch through the offending line. “You don’t,” he adds, almost idly. Jaskier blinks down at the parchments in surprise.

“I don’t?”

“Used to,” the White Wolf says, straightening but not backing away. Jaskier can feel the warmth radiating from him, like standing near a banked hearth. “Not anymore.”

“Yes, well, hard to be scared of someone whose daughter uses him for a climbing structure,” Jaskier says, keeping his voice deliberately light.

“Hm,” the White Wolf says, but he sounds more amused than annoyed, so Jaskier takes it as a win and goes back to perusing the treaty draft. He finds three more issues - the last one being an attempt to get King Vizimir’s grandson betrothed to Ciri, which has to have been written in after the envoys arrived, and makes both the White Wolf _and_ Eskel growl low in their throats. Jaskier crosses that line out himself, scratching hard enough to tear the parchment.

“Frankly,” he says, tossing the last page down and straightening, “I think you’d be better off writing your own treaty and shoving it down their fucking throats, my lord. This is _bullshit_.”

“Hm,” says the White Wolf, and then, “Geralt.”

Jaskier turns to blink at him. “What?”

“My name,” the White Wolf says. “Not ‘my lord.’” He gestures at the parchment-strewn table, the quiet office. “You teach Ciri; you advise me. Drop the ‘my lord’ bullshit. Doesn’t suit you.”

Jaskier doesn’t let his jaw drop, but it’s a near thing. “Ah,” he says, knowing his voice is quavering and unable to do anything about it. “Yes, my...Geralt.”

The White Wolf raises an eyebrow at him, clearly amused by how that particular slip of the tongue sounded, and Jaskier can feel himself blushing, face hot enough to burn. The White Wolf doesn’t _say_ anything, though, and Eskel is kind enough to muffle his laugh with a fake cough.

“So, writing our own?” Eskel says, and Jaskier takes the excuse to look away from the White Wolf’s golden eyes with _immense_ relief.

“Probably best,” he says, and grabs a spare scrap of parchment and starts scribbling. “I know you want to extend the laws about not hassling nonhumans, so that needs to be first thing - this piece of trash, you see it’s one of the lesser clauses, I bet they were hoping they could get it tossed out in negotiations later - but what else do you want as top priority?”

“How the fuck do you _know_ this sort of thing?” Eskel asks, frowning at the heap of parchment.

“...About the nonhuman protection laws, or about writing treaties?”

“Both,” the White Wolf - _Geralt_ \- grunts. “Either.”

“I mean, it’s hard to miss the bit where you come down like a ton of bricks on anyone who messes with nonhumans,” Jaskier says, frowning up at the White - _Geralt_. “And I _know_ I told you I studied the seven liberal arts at Oxenfurt. That’s history and politics and all that bullshit as well as music. Got to have well-rounded nobles, right?”

“Huh,” Eskel says. The Whi- _Geralt_ considers this and then shrugs a little.

“Anyway, what do you want most _besides_ the nonhuman protection stuff?” Jaskier asks, turning back to his parchment. “Oh, and a nonaggression pact, I suppose, though frankly anyone who’d try to go to war with you is an idiot, but then again the nobility of Redania have not been _impressing_ me with their intelligence, these last few years -”

Geralt snorts. “Brains like rocks,” he says. “Gave you away.”

Jaskier loses the ability to speak for a moment, he’s so utterly shocked. He’s back to blushing, too, his ears so hot he thinks he could probably fry an egg on them. That was a _compliment_ , pure and simple, unmistakable, and Jaskier _does not know_ what to do with the fact that the _White Wolf_ has just complimented him.

“Right!” he says at last, knowing both Witchers can probably _smell_ how embarrassed and pleased he is, and deciding to ignore it as hard as he can and hope they do too. “Exactly! Idiots, the lot of them. So a nonaggression pact is probably a good idea. And then anything else you think is vitally important, and then we can add in all sorts of nasty little things that you can reluctantly give up during the negotiations so you _look_ generous and accommodating and aren’t actually giving up anything you genuinely care about.”

“Sneaky,” Eskel says approvingly. “Here, put in something about acceptable forms of tribute. We don’t want any idiots thinking that just because _you_ turned out to be just what we needed, they can send just _anyone_ along.”

Jaskier does not know what to do with this - with the Witchers saying outright that he’s _valued_. He scratches down _acceptable tribute - not people_ and forces his voice to stay perfectly steady as he says, “Alright, got that. What else?”

*

After a week or so, in which Jaskier has been summoned to the White Wolf’s office just about every afternoon, and has become the primary author of the treaty that they’re going to shove down King Vizimir’s throat, he has to admit that he is - to his own bemused pleasure - definitely one of the White Wolf’s advisors. This is confirmed at supper one evening when Eskel snags his elbow and tows him along up the high table to the seat at Eskel’s own right hand, only one space down from the imposing almost-throne that Geralt uses. None of the Wolf Witchers object to shifting down a bit, at least not that Jaskier can see; Lambert, on his right, just grins at him, lazy and smug, and says, “Great, now I don’t have to worry about political bullshit while I’m fucking _eating_.”

Jaskier eats and makes conversation with Eskel and Lambert and sings when the meal is over, and only after Geralt has taken Ciri off to bed and Lambert is deeply involved in a dice game with a Griffin Witcher and Yennefer and Vesemir are arguing about something does he lean over to Eskel and say, as quietly as he can under the noise of dozens of warriors singing and laughing and bantering and generally making merry, “Why now?”

“Hm?” Eskel says.

“Why - move me up the table? Why make me an _advisor_?” Jaskier hisses.

“Oh, that,” Eskel says, and lounges back in his chair with a grin. “‘You can hardly complain if my loyalty now lies with a far finer king than Redania’s.’ Sound familiar?”

“Oh,” Jaskier says, feeling his ears heat again. “I didn’t know you heard that.”

Eskel chuckles. “Me, Yen, Vesemir...half the Wolf School…” He shrugs. “You’ve been doing a good job with Ciri, but that might’ve just been self-preservation or pride in doing your duty or even just liking kids. And you’ve been giving good advice all year, making yourself useful to Triss, too; but eh, could’ve just been wanting to be useful enough that we wouldn’t kick you out or something. _That_ , though. You weren’t lying. You’re loyal to the Wolf. That makes you one of the pack.”

“Oh,” Jaskier says again. “I. I am. Loyal to the Wolf, I mean.” He _is_. He wasn’t, when he was brought here - a year ago, he was _terrified_ , not loyal - but a year is a long time, and the White Wolf - _Geralt_ \- is -

Well, the rumors about the Warlord that Jaskier heard in Redania are one and all _bullshit_. He’s not a vicious beast; he’s not conquering the world for fun, or wealth, or bloodlust; he’s not _evil_. He’s a good man, a good father, a good _king_ even if he hates being reminded that he is, technically, royalty now. He cares for his people, both those in Kaer Morhen and all the folk in the lands he’s conquered, human and nonhuman, young and old. He’s ruthless in war and gentle in peace and _good_ all through, behind the gruffness and the glowering and those fierce golden eyes that still seem to see right through Jaskier every time. There’s a reason Jaskier has managed to write half a song cycle about the man already, with plans for at least another few _dozen_ songs. He’s the sort of muse a bard can only dream of, handsome and noble and dangerous and kind, _compelling_ in a way no one else Jaskier has ever met has been.

He’s still terrifying, but somewhere along the way it started being _reassuring_ : the sun rises, the moon changes, the White Wolf is terrifying and his enemies flee in fear before him. But Jaskier’s not his enemy, and so he’s _behind_ the terrifying, protected by that as surely as by Kaer Morhen’s thick walls.

“Yeah, we know,” Eskel says almost gently. “And since you’re pack, and you’ve got knowledge we don’t, skills we don’t, we need you as one of the Wolf’s advisors.”

“Oh,” Jaskier says. He needs to find something else to say, some other sound to sum up his astonishment and slowly growing delight. “I’m - I’m honored. Truly.”

Eskel chuckles and stands, clapping Jaskier on the shoulder. “Have to see about getting you a medallion,” he says thoughtfully. “If there’s going to be more envoys coming through, we want to make sure none of them get the wrong idea.” He strides out of the hall, humming what Jaskier is astonished and delighted to realize is _The Siege of Ard Carraigh_ , and Jaskier slumps back in his seat and blinks at his ale-mug and rubs his fingers across his chest.

Every Witcher wears a medallion, and those humans who have been accepted by a specific group of Witchers are - sometimes - given their own, smaller and unenchanted, to mark their allegiance. Yennefer and Triss and Ciri all have silver wolves’ heads strung about their necks, and wear them proudly. Many of the human warriors at the long tables have bears, or griffins, or manticores. Jaskier has never actually thought _he’d_ get one, though.

A wolf’s head, marking him as the White Wolf’s for everyone to see. Melitele help him, he wants that - wants it with a sudden and astonishing fervor.

The White Wolf has laid claim to him, and Jaskier has sworn his loyalty, and now he wants the symbol of that oath, to wear about his throat for everyone to see.

Well, _that’s_ a new and exciting thing to learn about himself, isn’t it?

*

When Jaskier gets to the White Wolf’s office after dinner the next day, there’s a medallion lying on the pile of parchments on the table. It’s clearly new-minted, shining brightly in the lantern-light. Jaskier touches it with a single finger, almost afraid that it will still be hot enough to burn, but the metal is cool to the touch.

Geralt hums and picks the medallion up by its chain, and Jaskier ducks his head, and the medallion settles heavy and cool against his chest. There’s no particular ceremony to it - Jaskier didn’t really expect one. Witchers, as far as he can tell, don’t go in for such things. Jaskier tucks the medallion carefully under his chemise, where it won’t get in the way as he’s working. The coolness fades away, leaving it body-warm, and the unaccustomed weight of it becomes _normal_ so quickly that that night, as Jaskier is getting ready for bed, he’s almost surprised to see it about his throat. It seems _right_ , like something he’s been wearing all his life - like something he was meant to wear.

Jaskier wraps a hand around it and decides quite firmly that he will never take it off again.

*

Jaskier usually bathes in the morning, before breakfast; Triss bathes at the same time, and a handful of the servants, and Jaskier has gotten used to starting his day with some cheerful conversation and maybe a brief race across the largest and coldest pool. He hasn’t beaten Triss _yet_ , but he will one of these days.

This routine breaks for the first time about two weeks after his first night at Eskel’s right hand. He _did_ bathe in the morning, as it happens, but then it was a beautiful day and Ciri insisted that if they _had_ to talk about boring history they could at least do it _outside_ , and she was clearly going to be utterly uncooperative if he disagreed, and it _was_ a beautiful day, so Jaskier took her out for a walk in the meadows above the castle, and then, inevitably, there was a mud puddle.

He gets down to the hot springs, having delivered a moderately repentant Ciri to Yennefer, to find that he’s managed - for the first time in the more than a year he’s been in Kaer Morhen - to choose the same bathing hour as the Witchers use after their morning practices.

There are...there are a _lot_ of naked Witchers.

Thankfully, as Triss told him so many months ago, they all seem to prefer the _really_ hot pools, the ones that Jaskier has occasionally dipped a toe into and then retreated from hastily because he doesn’t _actually_ want to boil alive, and he finds a place in one of the moderately warm ones without any trouble, rinses his hair out and sags back against the smooth edge of the pool to relax.

Lambert splashes in beside him a few minutes later. “What the fuck happened to _you_ , buttercup? You looked like you’d been dragged headfirst through a mudpit.”

“You’re not far wrong,” Jaskier says ruefully. “Ciri happened.”

Lambert guffaws, drawing the attention of half a dozen other Witchers. To Jaskier’s surprise, his quiet pool is abruptly crowded: Eskel and Aubry and Gweld and - bafflingly - _Geralt_ all come sliding into the water around him. “Little menace get you?” Gweld asks, tugging at a lock of Jaskier’s hair where he apparently hasn’t gotten all the mud out.

“She found a quite remarkably deep mud puddle,” Jaskier says, grinning at the redhead. “I think she probably could have gone swimming in it.”

“Oh, up in the north pasture,” Eskel says, chuckling. “Good thing you _didn’t_ try to swim - there’s a bloedzuiger lives at the bottom.”

“A _what_?” Jaskier squeaks. “You let a swamp monster live that close to your -” he breaks off as all the Witchers except Geralt start to grin. “Oh. Oh, _now_ I learn you have a sense of humor,” he grumbles, not nearly as irritated as he’s pretending to be, and Eskel laughs harder.

“We cleaned out most of the dangerous shit years ago,” Gweld says. “Anything left, the cub could protect you easy enough.”

“Hmph,” Jaskier says. “Don’t you think I could defend _her_?”

He gets five nearly identical dubious looks. “Against sneaky diplomats and political traps, definitely,” Eskel says after a moment. “Against anything more physically dangerous than a particularly aggressive chicken, though…” he trails off as Jaskier squawks indignantly.

“Hm,” says Geralt, drawing all eyes. “Could probably manage at _least_ a goose.”

“I genuinely don’t know whether to be flattered or offended,” Jaskier informs Geralt.

“Flattered. Geese are vicious,” Geralt says solemnly, and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes say he’s _enjoying_ this - enjoying _teasing_ Jaskier. Jaskier can’t stop himself from grinning back.

“I got bitten by a goose once,” Gweld says thoughtfully. “Fuckers have teeth on their tongues.”

“Bullshit,” Lambert says, recoiling. “No fucking way!”

“No, really,” Gweld says, “damn things are _nasty_. They hiss! Like fucking snake birds!”

“There is no fucking way they have _teeth_ on their _tongues_ , they’re _birds_ ,” Lambert says, and Jaskier pulls his legs in as Gweld, annoyed at the slight to his honesty, lunges across the pool to dunk Lambert under the water. The water sloshes wildly, and Jaskier sputters as he gets splashed in the face by a particularly violent wave. To his surprise, an arm loops around his waist and tugs him to one side, tucking him between a large body and the wall, so the wrestling match can’t roll over him. Jaskier wipes the water from his eyes and manages to keep his jaw from dropping only with a great effort: the Witcher shielding him from the chaos is _Geralt_. Golden eyes crinkle as Geralt looks down at him.

“Alright there?” Geralt murmurs. Jaskier nods mutely, throat dry. This is easily the closest he’s ever been to the White Wolf; the Witcher’s shoulders are like a wall, blocking out the world, and his golden eyes are warm and dangerously compelling. His arm around Jaskier’s waist is a bar of iron.

“Thanks,” Jaskier croaks after a moment.

Geralt taps a finger against the medallion around Jaskier’s throat, the metal blood-warm against Jaskier’s skin. “Got to protect my bard.”

“Much appreciated,” Jaskier says. “You know, I’m not sure bathing with Witchers is good for my health.”

Geralt _chuckles_. It’s a stunningly lovely sound. Jaskier wants to hear it again. “No?”

Eskel and Aubry between them pick Lambert up and fling him into a deep pool some distance away. He lands with an almighty _splosh_ and a yelp, and several other Witchers call cheerful, filthy insults at the commotion. Gweld surfaces, spitting water, and hauls himself out of the pool to follow Lambert; Eskel snags his ankle and topples him back into their pool with another enormous splash. Geralt ducks his head to block the water from hitting Jaskier _again_. Jaskier feels very small, caged in against the wall by Geralt’s bulk - no, not caged. _Protected_.

“No,” Jaskier says. “Not unless I suddenly grow gills.”

“Hm,” Geralt says, and shakes the water from his hair, the droplets glinting in the lantern light like diamonds. He is terrifyingly beautiful. “Fair.” He shifts back and gives Jaskier a boost out of the water. “Go get dry, little lark.”

_Little lark?_ Jaskier mouths to himself as he heads for the dry cavern with its bronze mirror. No one in Kaer Morhen has called him that before. He’s called _bard_ often, and _buttercup_ when Lambert feels like being an ass (which is all the time), and _little flower_ when Yennefer is teasing him (which is most of the time), but... _little lark_. He rather likes it.

He likes that _Geralt_ has called him that.

_There was a lark upon a branch, that sang and sang and sang / and there below the tree there sat a wolf as white as snow_ …

Oh. Oh dear. Jaskier blinks at his reflection in the bronze mirror as he straightens his hair. Oh fuck. Lust is one thing - he defies anyone with _eyes_ not to feel at least a little lust for the White Wolf in all his glory. But falling in love would be...very, very foolish indeed.

_Little lark_.

Oh dear.


	6. Chapter 6

Jaskier needs a few days to get his head - and heart - sorted out, so naturally there’s a crisis at once. The king of Kovir, in a fit of inspired stupidity, apparently decides that since Caingorn is the smallest and least conveniently located of the White Wolf’s lands, surely the Warlord won’t mind if he just _takes_ it.

The White Wolf minds.

Yennefer apparently gets the news by xenovox sometime in the afternoon. Geralt announces the invasion over supper and gives crisp, clear orders to his warriors. The next morning, Yennefer and whoever her contact is in Caingorn raise a portal between them, and the White Wolf leads more than three hundred Witchers through the portal at a trot. Jaskier and Ciri watch from the steps of the keep, Ciri’s hand tight on Jaskier’s. Her father may be the Warlord of the North, but she does not enjoy watching him go off to war.

Jaskier doesn’t even bother trying to hold a proper lesson that morning. Instead, he asks Ciri to show him her favorite parts of Kaer Morhen, and spends his usual teaching hours following her up and down through narrow corridors and twisting stairways as she chatters nineteen to the dozen, pointing out the sort of landmarks and points of interest that matter to a ten-year-old girl. It is, in fact, distracting enough that they’re both able to not think about the fact that Ciri’s Papa has just gone off to fight.

At dinner, Jaskier looks around at the nearly-empty tables and shakes his head. There’s a skeleton crew still in Kaer Morhen: about fifty warriors, mostly Witchers too old to go to war but easily dangerous enough to defend the keep; the trainers for the boys who will someday _become_ Witchers themselves; the boys, maybe forty lads between eight and fourteen, all looking excited and a little scared; Triss, who is of more use making healing potions than on a battlefield; Vesemir, to keep everyone in line; and of course Jaskier himself, and Ciri. “Come on,” he says quietly to Ciri, and leads her down from the high table to the end of the Bear table, beckoning Triss and Vesemir and a _very_ old Wolf Witcher whose name he has never caught to join him. Slowly, they do so, and the other people scattered through the hall in their widely-spaced usual seats come trickling over until everyone is clustered around the Bear table, close enough to talk and take comfort in each other.

Jaskier would never dare invite anyone up to the _high_ table without Geralt’s nod, but bringing Ciri down to the lower tables at a time like this seems only sensible. And everyone _does_ seem happier, sitting together and talking rather than widely scattered and too vividly cognisant of all the empty chairs and benches.

“Good thought,” Triss murmurs to him under the rumble of conversation.

“Any word from Yen?” Jaskier asks softly. Several nearby Witchers give him sharp looks despite his care. Triss grimaces a little and shakes her head. Too soon, Jaskier guesses; even _Witchers_ can’t win a war in a morning. “Will you take Ciri for her afternoon lessons, then?” he adds, pretending that was why he was asking about Yennefer in the first place.

“It’d be my pleasure,” Triss says, smiling.

*

With Ciri safely off learning sorcery from Triss, Jaskier retreats to his sitting room and attempts to work on the next song in the _White Wolf Rising_ cycle, tentatively titled _Vengeance at Vengerberg_. He has the story all plotted out, mostly thanks to Yennefer, and the melody pretty well nailed down, so really all that’s needed are the _words_ , but he keeps finding himself staring out the window dazedly instead of writing.

After the third time he has to yank himself back to his task, he sighs and pushes the half-written scroll away and thunks his head gently on the table. Fine. _Fine_. He’s mooning dreamily over the fucking _White Wolf_ , because it turns out that the White Wolf is ungodly handsome and actually has a sense of humor and adores his daughter and is sweetly protective of his people, and also is _ungodly handsome_ , has Jaskier mentioned that, and the feel of Geralt’s arm around his waist yanking him to safety is a memory Jaskier isn’t going to forget any time soon.

 _My lover is beyond compare / with golden eyes and moonlit hair / as fierce as winter in his wrath / a gentle summer in the bath_...alright, no, that’s _terrible_ , but fuck it, Jaskier hasn’t written stupid love poetry in a while. It’s not like he has to _show_ it to anyone. And maybe writing a couple of sappy, silly love songs will get this out of his head before Geralt comes back. Chance would be a fine thing.

Jaskier tugs some loose parchment close and starts to write. The words flow easily, far more easily than _Vengeance at Vengerberg_ was - the melodies leap to his mind, like water flowing down a hill, rippling and chiming. He loses himself in the sheer joy of writing something that doesn’t have to be _good_ , doesn’t even have to be _done_ , and when he’s wrung himself dry of words he sits back and grabs his lute and plays the tunes he’s just scribbled down, mouthing the words without sound, laughing at his own folly. They’re silly little tunes, easy to whistle or hum, and there are some flaws - he’d never submit any of them for a class at Oxenfurt - but they’re _fun_ , and nobody has to know the words that go with them, right?

 _If you go out in the hills at night / there’s a wolf who’s waiting there / he’ll hunt you over hill and height / be you fleet as deer or hare / He’ll chase you ‘neath the pale moon / he’ll catch you in the shadowed dark / his silver teeth will be your doom / his golden eyes will claim your heart_.

Jaskier is still humming it when he goes down to supper.

*

They all crowd onto the Bear table again at supper, and after the meal is over Jaskier gets up and sings anything anyone requests - thankfully, no one suggests anything too bawdy, given that Ciri is _right there_ \- and stays up far later than he usually does, because everyone is so discombobulated by the lack of the rest of the warriors that no one wants to go to bed. Finally, when Ciri falls asleep on Vesemir’s shoulder _despite_ trying to sing along, Jaskier finishes one last song and holds up his hands to signal he’s done.

“I can - help put her to bed?” he offers, and Vesemir nods and picks her up, cradling her in his arms and leading the way up to Ciri’s rooms. Jaskier gets the doors so Vesemir doesn’t have to free a hand from the heap of limp limbs and white-blonde hair. Ciri mumbles in her sleep as Vesemir puts her down, and Jaskier unlaces her boots and lines them up neatly beside the bed, tucks a blanket over her as Vesemir sets her daggers on the table by the bed and smooths her hair out of her face.

“She’s a good kid,” Jaskier says as they let themselves very quietly out of her bedroom.

“She is a fine cub,” Vesemir says, which is the most agreeable thing Jaskier has ever heard him say. “Thought Geralt was mad when he brought her home, but she’s good for him. Good for all of us.”

“Her mother…?” Jaskier asks, as delicately as he can.

Vesemir shakes his head. “No idea,” he says, which surprises Jaskier quite a lot. “Witchers are sterile. Trust Geralt to be the one who isn’t.”

“Oh,” Jaskier says. “She must’ve been quite a woman, to bear a child like Ciri.”

“Hm,” Vesemir says, frowning at him. Or maybe that’s just his face; Witchers, Jaskier has found, are a frowny lot. He gives Jaskier a friendly sort of clap on the shoulder as they reach the foot of the stairs. “Good job today,” he says gruffly. “Distracting the cub, and with meals. ‘S the first time she’s really been old enough to understand where her Papa’s gone.”

“I hope I helped,” Jaskier says.

“You did,” Vesemir says, and goes stumping off towards the Witcher sleeping quarters.

Jaskier heads to his own rooms, warm with unexpected praise, and falls asleep with a hand wrapped around his medallion, and dreams of golden eyes.

*

In the morning, Triss informs him that she’s heard from Yennefer and everything’s going fine - or as fine as anything ever goes in war. Jaskier tells Ciri as much when he gets up to her rooms to start their lessons, and a very relieved Ciri actually manages to get some studying done - not much, but a little, and Jaskier can’t exactly blame her for her distraction. They have dinner at the Bear table again, and Jaskier spends the afternoon composing. He actually gets a little work done on _Vengeance_ , but most of what spills from his quill are love songs.

Well. Some of them are _lust_ songs, to be perfectly honest. The White Wolf is an _obscenely_ attractive man, and Jaskier is only human, after all. He has several minutes of regret, halfway through one scrawled ditty, that he didn’t take a good look while they were all in the bath. It seemed impolitic at the time, but now he really wishes his mental image of the White Wolf _naked_ extended below the waist. Not that Geralt’s chest isn’t a thing of glory, broad and scarred as it is, but still.

Come to think of it, Jaskier has no idea if Witcher mutations change the...below-the-belt equipment, as it were. If they give cats’ eyes, there’s no reason they couldn’t also give cats’ _pricks_ , after all. On the other hand, Jaskier knows that several of the humans in Kaer Morhen have Witchers as lovers, which would probably not be true if such a thing were actively painful, and also all the mutations seem to have some sort of useful property - keener senses, faster healing, swifter movement - while bizarre sexual organs would have no use at all. So probably they’re much like normal humans, and sex with a Witcher is much like _sex_ with a normal human...aside from the fact that Witchers have far greater strength and stamina. Which. Well. That could end up being _exhausting_ , but probably very, very pleasant along the way. And Jaskier _has_ always liked a challenge.

Not, mind you, that he’s probably going to get to find _out_ , because all this speculation about what it might be like to bed the White Wolf is, Jaskier understands this perfectly, a _fantasy_ , not a thing which is actually going to happen in the real world. If nothing else, Jaskier is fairly sure Geralt and Yennefer have a sexual relationship of _some_ sort, and given that and the fact that Ciri exists, Geralt is clearly interested in women, but Jaskier’s never even heard a _breath_ of a suggestion that the White Wolf is interested in men, other than the scurrilous rumors told by people who have never even laid eyes on the Warlord of the North.

He could ask Triss. She might know. But that would be a little too revealing, and Jaskier may wear his heart on his sleeve, but there’s no reason for him to go _flaunting_ it, is there now? And anyway this might be a fleeting sort of fancy, an idle whim that blows over in a storm of love poems and wistful sighs and then a month later you can’t even remember who you were pining for. Jaskier has certainly done _that_ before; sometimes it seems like his years at Oxenfurt went by in a flurry of light-o-loves and blissfully flinging his heart after everyone who walked by.

(None of them ever called him _little lark_. None of them ever laid claim to him, put a hand on his shoulder and said _mine_ , put a medallion around his throat and said _my bard_. None of them ever looked right through him with golden eyes and saw something worth _keeping_.)

Yes. This will definitely blow over. With a little luck, by the time Geralt gets back from what’s probably going to turn into conquering Kovir, Jaskier will have written quite a lot of love songs and spent a few evenings pining dramatically while playing his lute in the windowsill and staring out at the mountains and then _gotten over it_.

*

Geralt gets back three _very long_ weeks later, and Jaskier has not gotten over it. He’s still writing love songs when he ought to be concentrating on the _Wolf Rising_ cycle, and he’s still finding himself daydreaming about golden eyes and a strong arm hauling him to safety - usually at extremely inopportune moments, such that both Ciri and Triss have asked him if he’s feeling alright, given how dazed he’s looking - and he’s still waking up from very _vivid_ dreams about how, exactly, enhanced strength and stamina might affect sex.

He may also have managed to end up in the baths at the same time as one of the female warriors who is _definitely_ in a relationship with one of the Viper Witchers, and who is not out fighting because she has a broken leg, and have steered the conversation _accidentally_ towards Witcher sexual habits, which might perhaps have resulted in the _filthiest_ monologue he’s ever heard. It was extremely educational in more ways than one, and Jaskier has been forced to revise his assumption that bards have the dirtiest imaginations in the world. Witchers, after all, have more time to _practice_.

So yes. Jaskier has not gotten over it.

The White Wolf’s army comes back through a broad portal, jogging ten abreast, some of them carrying their wounded. Jaskier is waiting on the steps with Ciri, who clutches at his hand tightly and watches the Witchers come pouring into the courtyard, fidgeting desperately, until finally, last through the portal, Geralt and Eskel and Yennefer appear. Behind them, the portal collapses.

Geralt looks... _tired_ , Jaskier thinks. Like he’s been up for _days_. Eskel looks just as exhausted. Yennefer is drooping a little, her usual perfect hairdo a mess and her makeup streaky as it never is. But they smile up at Ciri - and maybe a bit at Jaskier - and Ciri lets go of Jaskier’s hand and bolts down the steps with a whoop to wrap her arms around her Papa’s waist. Geralt goes down on one knee to embrace her. Jaskier sniffles a little - it’s sweet! He’s a bard! He’s meant to be emotional at moments like this! - and then goes down after her to offer a shoulder to Yennefer. She gives him a brief, rueful smile and leans on him a _lot_ harder than he expected. Eskel starts giving orders to the Witchers, sending the wounded and their carriers one way, the healthy another. Vesemir steps up beside him to help direct traffic.

Jaskier gets Yennefer to her rooms, sending a servant for food and another for a basin of warm water, and gets a bowl of soup into her before she falls asleep, quite suddenly, on his shoulder. He manages to get her into the bed, tugs off her shoes and covers her with a blanket, and goes to find Triss to tell her to check on Yennefer, because if this is more than exhaustion, he doesn’t know how to deal with it.

And then he sort of dithers, because what he _wants_ to do is go find Geralt and make sure he’s _alright_ , but - Geralt could be almost anywhere. Up in Ciri’s room, down in the baths, in his office, in his _own_ rooms -

“There you are,” Eskel says, draping an arm around Jaskier’s shoulders. “C’mon.”

*

Jaskier follows him obediently down to the hot springs, where Geralt and Ciri and Vesemir have settled in one of the human-safe pools. Geralt appears to be dozing, but he cracks one eye open as Jaskier slides into the water and asks, “Yen alright?”

“I think she’s just tired, but I asked Triss to go look her over,” Jaskier reports. Geralt nods and closes his eye again.

“Held the portal by herself,” he says.

“The...other mage?” Jaskier asks. There ought to have been another. He hasn’t had time to ask anyone what sort of casualty count the Witcher army had, or if they lost anyone he knows.

“Wore himself out protecting her in the last battle,” Eskel says. “He’s fine, just out of commission for a few days.”

Jaskier nods, relieved. He knows the sorcerers who came with Yennefer to join the White Wolf’s army are a sort of family themselves, siblings or cousins out of love and not blood, and the loss of one of them would distress Yennefer and Triss and probably Ciri, too. “So,” he says, “do I need to add Kovir to your list of holdings, o Warlord of the North?”

Geralt groans and puts a hand over his eyes. Ciri giggles. “Yes,” Geralt says, very grumpily. “Idiot king wouldn’t back down.”

“You realize I’m going to need a _much_ better description than that for the songs,” Jaskier says, grinning at the realization that he’s _teasing_ the White Wolf, that that’s a thing he can do.

“He was stupid. We fought. I killed him,” Geralt says, voice very flat, but there are crinkles at the corners of his still-closed eyes, and Ciri giggles.

“That is _not_ better,” Jaskier says, firmly suppressing his own laughter, and reaches over to poke Geralt in the shoulder. It’s the first time _he’s_ touched _Geralt_ , rather than the other way around. “Come on, you can be more eloquent than that!”

He moves to poke Geralt again, and Geralt’s hand comes out of the water and wraps around his wrist, fast as a striking snake, the grip unbreakable but not tight enough to hurt at all. Eskel snorts.

“Caught you,” Geralt says, lips actually quirking into a very small smile.

“How do you do that without looking?” Jaskier asks, wiggling his fingers idly. He’s not getting his hand back anytime soon, evidently. Ciri giggles at him.

“Poor sort of Witcher he’d be to need eyes when you’re splashing,” Eskel says. Vesemir nods.

“Fascinating,” Jaskier says. “Am I going to get my hand back, or is it yours now?”

Geralt hums. “If I give it back, you’ll poke me.”

“Absolutely not!” Jaskier says, giving Ciri a broad wink. “No poking, nope, I would never do such a thing.”

Ciri giggles harder.

“I do not even need to be able to hear your heartbeat to tell you’re lying,” Geralt says, and he’s smiling _properly_ now, not just a quirk of his lips but a real, genuine _smile_.

“So you’re just going to...keep my hand,” Jaskier says. “That might get inconvenient at some point.”

“Hm,” says Geralt, as if considering this point carefully. Jaskier wiggles his fingers again, and then starts making shadow-puppet figures with them. Ciri laughs so hard that Eskel has to scoop her up so she won’t slip under the water.

“You could just tell me the story properly?” Jaskier suggests, shifting a little closer so his arm’s not quite as stretched out and relaxing back against the side of the pool. His feet tangle up with Geralt’s and Eskel’s and Vesemir’s in the center.

“War’s a fucking terrible story,” Geralt says, and he doesn’t look happy now. “It was a stupid king, and a stupid war, and people died who didn’t have to. It wasn’t _heroic_ or -” He breaks off and scrubs his free hand over his face. “Fucking _kings_.”

“Oh,” Jaskier says, and is, rather uncharacteristically, at a loss for words. He’s never _seen_ a war, actually. He’s sung about a lot of them - has written songs about the White Wolf’s wars - but it occurs to him that Geralt’s campaigns do tend to, first, be against kings or lords who are genuinely _monstrous_ , and second, result in as little loss of life as possible. He goes for the leaders of any given army, cuts off the head and sends the poor foot soldiers home to their families whenever he can.

Huh. _Wolf Rising_ is going to need at least two songs emphasizing the White Wolf’s mercy. Maybe three. Jaskier could work in something about monster-slaying, too - oh. Oh! Interstitial songs about Witchers hunting monsters, with clear parallels to the lords and kings the White Wolf has overthrown! If he rearranges things a little bit - use the same basic _tune_ for the main story and the hunt song associated with it -

“Welp, you’ve lost the bard,” Vesemir says, snorting a little. “He’s off composing again.”

Jaskier wiggles the fingers of his trapped hand at Vesemir dismissively; his free hand is busy scrabbling for the little slate he left with his clothes, the one he keeps in a pocket for moments of inspiration like this. Eskel makes a long arm and pushes it into Jaskier’s reach, and Jaskier grabs the little piece of chalk he keeps tied to the slate and starts scribbling. After a moment he realizes he’s using his left hand.

“Could we switch which hand you’re keeping captive?” he asks Geralt. “I kind of need that one.”

“Hm,” says Geralt, and then he _does_ let go of Jaskier’s hand, and wraps his arm around Jaskier’s waist instead, tugging him sideways so he’s pressed against Geralt from shoulder to thigh. Jaskier drops his chalk. This is - this is -

“Right,” he says, knowing he sounds a bit strangled. “Effective method of bard capture, very good, top marks.” Ciri laughs at whatever expression he’s wearing.

“Go back to composing, little lark,” Geralt says, and Jaskier picks the chalk up in a hand that very definitely isn’t shaking because he won’t let it, and starts jotting down as many new ideas for his song cycle as he can before they escape, chalk flying over the slate as Ciri and Eskel talk quietly and Vesemir interjects occasional comments and Geralt -

Geralt just lounges back against the side of the pool with his arm around Jaskier’s waist and holds him, and behind the mess and noise of composing that fills Jaskier’s brain, lyrics and melodies and harmonies all clamoring to be heard at once, a tiny voice is chanting, _Little lark. Little lark, he called you little lark again._


	7. Chapter 7

There is, of course, a feast. It’s not the night the army gets back - there’s not enough time for the servants to put a feast together at such short notice, and also there are the injured to care for and everyone’s exhausted and not in the mood to stay up late carousing. Instead, it’s a week later, and most of the injured are at least back on their feet if not wholly healed (Witcher healing is a marvelous thing), and Jaskier, having spent the last week in a creative fugue, is ready to debut his newest song.

It’s _not_ about the White Wolf’s defeat of the King of Kovir, as it happens. He _did_ get the full story, from Yennefer, and it’s probably going to end up being a song at some point, but it’s not the song for _this_ feast. It’s one whose story he got from _Vesemir_ , of all people, about the founding of the Wolf School and the reason Witchers exist, and it’s going to be the first song in _Wolf Rising_. _Here_ , it says. _This is what Witchers are. This is what they are for. They stand between us and the monsters, and the finest Witcher in the world - the Wolf School’s most glorious student - is the White Wolf who saw that humans, too, could be monsters, and thus fair prey._

He’s quite proud of it. It’s some of his best work, if he does say so himself, and it introduces the theme he’s using for the White Wolf only right at the end, so it’s a hook for the rest of the cycle, and - importantly - it has nothing to do with a stupid, ugly war brought about because a stupid king decided to make a truly idiotic decision.

Because Jaskier never wants to see that particular expression of weary, angry despair on Geralt’s face again - never wants to hear that tone of utter furious resignation as Geralt says _War’s a fucking terrible story - people died who didn’t have to._ It’s bad enough for that to have been a reaction to Jaskier’s questions; if it was because of one of his _songs_ , he’d probably have to go - jump off a tower or smash his lute or something.

So when the feasting is over, Jaskier gets up and slings his lute over his chest and sings his godsdamned heart out, praising the Witchers and their purpose with every word, and they _love_ it. Every Witcher in the hall is singing the chorus by the third iteration, including - Jaskier spins on his heel to look up at the high table and _Eskel_ is singing, Yennefer and Triss are singing, _Vesemir_ is singing, Ciri is pounding on the table and singing along two octaves higher than anyone else, and Geralt -

Oh, _fuck_. Jaskier stumbles, keeps his place in the song from sheer stubbornness, because Geralt is, unmistakably, singing along. And _smiling_.

Jaskier turns back around, because if he watches Geralt _singing_ to one of _his songs_ and _smiling about it_ he is going to completely lose his composure. And the energy of the rest of the hall is enough to buoy him up until it feels like he’s floating on air, keep him singing and playing and _grinning_ , because this is a _good_ song, a song he’s proud of, and the Witchers and the human warriors and the mages and the servants are _all_ singing along, thumping the beat on the tables and stomping their feet, and the chorus is almost loud enough to raise the roof, hundreds of voices bellowing along.

When Jaskier brings the song to its final, triumphant conclusion, there’s a brief pause and then a _wall_ of sound, cheering and clapping like he’s never heard before, and one of the Griffin Witchers gets up and picks him up and hugs him hard, and then he’s in the middle of a _scrum_ of Witchers, all of them clapping him on the back or ruffling his hair or hugging him, all of them laughing and cheering. He’s feeling a bit mauled, actually - _happily_ mauled, but still, some of the Witchers are forgetting that he’s a poor squishy _human_ , he’s going to have bruises on his shoulders and possibly his ribs -

And someone’s arms slip around his waist and tug him out of the crowd, the Witchers melting away around them like magic.

“ _My_ bard,” Geralt rumbles. “No breaking him.”

“White Wolf,” comes from several dozen throats in obedient response, and Geralt tugs Jaskier back up behind the high table and installs him in his usual chair, standing behind him like he’s worried someone is going to come and try to snatch Jaskier up again.

Jaskier tilts his head back against the chair and grins up at Geralt. “Thank you.”

“Hm,” Geralt says. “Are you hurt?”

“For a wonder, no,” Jaskier says. “And my lute’s not even dented! I must confess I didn’t think it was going to elicit quite that level of response, though.”

“It’s a good song,” Geralt says, and Jaskier feels like he’s _glowing_. Geralt _liked it_. Jaskier wrote a song to please Geralt, and it _worked_ , and Geralt called him _my bard_ and rescued him - to be fair, only from some overenthusiastic congratulations, but still -

Yep, Jaskier’s not getting over this particular bout of adoration anytime soon.

*

Geralt stays behind Jaskier’s chair for the rest of the evening, leaning on the high wooden back and dangling his hands down to toy idly with Jaskier’s hair. Jaskier tries hard not to move enough to make Geralt _stop_ doing that, and plays dance music without singing so that the Witchers can get some of their excess energy out without having to have a cheerful brawl, which he _has_ seen happen before. Ciri dances with every Witcher who will partner her, which is basically all of them, and Yennefer drags Vesemir out onto the dance floor, and Triss does the same to Lambert, and Jaskier taps his feet under the table and plays the bounciest, happiest music he knows, and it’s a really, really good night.

Ciri tires out first, naturally - Witcher’s daughter or no, she’s only ten. When she starts drooping, Eskel scoops her off the dance floor and carries her to Geralt, who takes her carefully on his hip - she leans her head against his shoulder and dozes off almost immediately - and then tugs Jaskier gently out of his chair. “Come on, little lark,” he says, and Jaskier follows him, baffled but willing. The Witchers have started doing a sort of stomping dance that doesn’t require any music, anyhow, and Jaskier’s sure they can amuse themselves for the rest of the night, and his fingers _are_ starting to cramp a bit.

Geralt puts Ciri to bed very carefully, handling her like she’s fragile - no, Jaskier decides, like she’s the most precious thing in the world, which of course she is. It’s very sweet, and Jaskier has to admit it doesn’t help dampen the fires of adoration in his chest, seeing the great White Wolf care for his cub so tenderly.

Once Geralt closes the door to Ciri’s room gently behind him, Jaskier can’t quite help teasing, because he’s very confused as to why _he_ was brought along for this, and he babbles when he’s confused. “Going to tuck me in, too?”

“Hm,” Geralt says, and looks Jaskier up and down, golden eyes somehow even more piercing than usual. “I could,” he says, and steps forward, and Jaskier backs up instinctively until he hits the wall, with the White Wolf looming over him, arms braced against the wall on either side of Jaskier’s head. “Little lark,” Geralt rumbles, low and soft and very, very worryingly appealing, “should I put you to bed? Or _take_ you to bed?”

Jaskier gapes. That - he - he can’t possibly be interpreting that correctly, and yet there is no possible _other_ interpretation he can think of. This has got to be a dream, or possibly a hallucination, and either way, he’s not going to pass up on what’s probably his only chance to ever have one of his fantasies come to life.

He knots both hands in the collar of Geralt’s shirt, and hauls him down into the messiest, filthiest, _hungriest_ kiss Jaskier knows how to give. Geralt seems surprised for a moment, and then he growls a little into the kiss and everything is teeth and tongues and it’s _so good_.

“Take me to bed,” he gasps when Geralt pulls away a little to bite kisses down his jawline to his throat. “Oh _fuck_ , Geralt, take me to bed.”

“Hm,” Geralt says, and steps back, and loops an arm around Jaskier’s waist to steer him down the stairs.

*

Jaskier has never actually been in Geralt’s rooms before. It’s never come up. He wasn’t even entirely sure where they _were_.

As it happens, they’re at the base of the tower where Ciri’s rooms are, and they’re not nearly as opulent as most people might expect the private chambers of the Warlord of the North to be. They’re comfortable, to be sure - warm and cozy, and the bed is large enough for several Witchers to roll around in - but not fancy. There’s a stand to one side for Geralt’s swords and armor, and shelves with books about monsters and war tactics, and a child’s doll propped up on the fireplace mantle looking slightly forlorn.

Jaskier puts his lute down next to Geralt’s armor stand and turns to see Geralt watching him with, for a change, a very _readable_ expression. Jaskier knows what lust looks like, and he has rarely seen it so clearly as on Geralt’s face right now.

This _has_ to be a dream. First he writes the best song of his life, and is given uproarious acclaim, and then the White Wolf himself, object of the last almost-a-year’s worth of Jaskier’s fantasies, wants to fuck him?

Well. Alright, Jaskier is going to have a really good dream then.

He saunters across the room to Geralt, getting right up in his personal space, and grins. “So. Here we are.”

“Here we are,” Geralt agrees, and loops an arm around Jaskier’s waist to pull him close. “Little lark; do you sing so sweetly in bed, too?”

“ _Um,_ ” Jaskier says, a little astonished at how terrifyingly arousing that sentence was. “I guess you’ll find out, won’t you?”

“That _is_ the plan,” Geralt says, nosing gently at the curve of Jaskier’s ear, breathing in deeply like he’s savoring Jaskier’s scent. Jaskier can’t decide where to put his hands and eventually does what he’s been wanting to for a while, and laces his fingers through Geralt’s moon-white hair. It’s astonishingly soft. “Fuck. You smell…”

He trails off, and Jaskier panics a bit. “I smell?”

“So _good_ ,” Geralt growls, and alright, _that’s_ reassuring, and also ridiculously arousing.

“What do I smell like?” Jaskier asks. Geralt hums and noses his way down Jaskier’s throat. Jaskier tips his head back to give Geralt better access, and Geralt makes such a satisfied sound that Jaskier’s knees almost give out.

“Happiness,” Geralt murmurs. “And lust.”

“Huh,” Jaskier says, making a mental note to ask about the range of emotions Witchers can sense. “Well, that is a fairly accurate assessment of my current emotional state, yes.”

“Hm,” says Geralt, sounding amused, and then he kisses Jaskier, and it’s -

It’s just overwhelming, is what it is. There are teeth happening, and tongues, and Geralt’s arms holding Jaskier up despite his wobbly knees, and the way Geralt growls softly into Jaskier’s mouth when Jaskier inadvertently yanks on his hair a little. “Bed,” Jaskier gasps when Geralt breaks the kiss to mouth down his throat again - oh fuck _teeth_ , Jaskier yanks at Geralt’s hair on purpose this time because _biting_ yes please but also a little _warning_ might be nice - “Bed, I am going to fall over if we don’t get horizontal.”

“Will you now,” Geralt says, and picks him up.

Well, that...that works, yes, that works quite well, Jaskier is not going to complain about Witcher strength, he is not complaining and also he is _definitely_ running several of the things Zofia told him about the sexual uses of Witcher strength over in his mind as things that he might get to _try_ in the relatively near future. Jaskier wraps his legs around Geralt’s waist and kisses him again. Geralt rumbles happily, a deep sound somewhere between a groan and a growl, and starts moving slowly across the room towards the enormous bed, one careful step at a time as though he’s afraid he’ll startle Jaskier if he moves too fast. As if any power in the world could get Jaskier to willingly leave this room right now.

Geralt puts him down on the bed and pulls back just an inch or two from the kiss until he can rest their foreheads together. “What do you like, little lark?”

“Uh?” Jaskier says, attempting to find some coherence somewhere. “Like?”

“In bed,” Geralt says patiently.

“Almost anything?” Jaskier says. “Fucking, being fucked, mouths, hands - I like almost anything, Geralt, and right now I’d like _you_.”

Geralt’s eyes are nearly black, the gold a thin ring around lust-blown pupils. “Reckless,” he says, sounding amused and fond, and takes a half-step back, hands going to the fastenings of his clothes. Jaskier watches dazedly for a moment until Geralt’s soft chuckle rouses him into motion, and then he does his best to get his clothes off faster than he ever has before. He’s down to just his chemise when he looks up and his breath goes whooshing from his chest like it’s been punched out of him.

Geralt, naked, is the kind of beauty that inspires statue-carvers and painters and - naturally - bards. He’s all muscle and sinew, scarred pale flesh and moon-white hair, and a prick that makes Jaskier’s mouth water and his eyes go wide. Of _course_ the White Wolf is hung like a god. Of course he looks like every one of Jaskier’s fantasies come true.

“I am going,” Jaskier says slowly, “to write you _so many_ songs.”

Geralt laughs, low and lovely. “Not about _this_ , little lark,” he says, and crawls onto the bed, tipping Jaskier over onto his back and moving to cover him, shoulders blocking out the rest of the world.

“You keep calling me that,” Jaskier says breathlessly, hands fluttering between Geralt’s hair and shoulders and the broad expanse of his chest.

“You like it.”

“I - well - yes, I do, how do you - you can _smell_ it, can’t you,” Jaskier says, laughing. “You can smell how much I like it.”

Geralt grins. “Little lark,” he says, voice somehow getting lower. “ _My_ little lark. My bard.”

And Jaskier, who has never known when to stop pushing, remembers the very first time he called Geralt by his name, and grins fearlessly up into golden eyes, and says, “My Geralt.”

“Hm,” Geralt says, smug and _pleased_ , and kisses Jaskier again. “Bold little lark, laying claim to a Witcher.”

“And why shouldn’t I be bold?” Jaskier asks as Geralt begins biting his way down his throat. “Here I am in the White Wolf’s den, ready to be - oh _fuck_ \- devoured -”

Geralt sits back on his heels, knees on either side of Jaskier's hips, and tugs at the collar of Jaskier’s chemise. “Take this off before I tear it off.”

Jaskier has four more chemises in his wardrobe and also has made friends with the very nice lady who made his most recent outfit, she won’t mind if he needs to ask her for another chemise, and also _sweet Melitele_ that’s ridiculously hot. “Tear it,” he gasps.

Geralt’s grin gets toothier, and he takes the chemise in both hands and _rips_ it apart. Jaskier makes a very undignified squeaking sound. Geralt hums in satisfaction, and Jaskier -

Well, he knows he isn’t the sort of picture of masculine perfection that Geralt is, though a year of trotting up and down the stairs of Kaer Morhen has done wonders for his legs, and playing the lute every day does mean he’s got surprising strength in his fingers and his arms and chest are perfectly _respectable_ , if not to Witcher standards, but honestly Jaskier has about half a second of being nervous about whether Geralt is going to like what he sees before all of his nerves are entirely wiped away by the low, lustful growl that rises from Geralt’s chest and the expression of raw hunger on Geralt’s handsome face. Jaskier may have been joking about being devoured, but it’s looking a little more like an actual _possibility_. In, Jaskier is entirely sure, the _sexual_ sense, thank you very much.

“ _My_ little lark,” Geralt says, and falls on him like the wolf he’s named for. Jaskier likes to think he’s a damn good lover, alright, he has _skills_ , his hands and his mouth are _finely-tuned instruments_ and he _is_ a master bard, but under the sudden onslaught of hands and teeth and tongue and the low purring rumble of Geralt’s satisfaction, Jaskier can’t do much more than get his hands back in Geralt’s hair and hang on for the ride.

Geralt leaves bites all down Jaskier’s sides, runs his hands over what feels like every inch of Jaskier’s skin, shifts down the bed to shoulder Jaskier’s legs apart and ducks his head and -

Apparently Witchers - or at least this Witcher - don’t have gag reflexes. Who knew? Jaskier thumps his head against the pillow beneath him and _yells_ in startled pleasure, and Geralt hums around his prick, and alright, that’s - that’s really, really _terrifyingly_ good -

“ _Geralt,_ ” he gasps, and Geralt hums again, which doesn’t help at all. Jaskier yanks a little harder on Geralt’s hair. “This is going to be over _much too soon_ if you keep doing _oh fuck_ that!”

Geralt raises his head and grins - well - _wolfishly_ up at Jaskier. “We have all night, little lark,” he purrs. “This is just to take the edge off.” And he lowers his head again, and for a man who doesn’t talk much, he’s got a _hell_ of a clever tongue.

Also, ‘just to take the edge off’? Oh fuck, Jaskier is going to _die of orgasms_ , but hey, that’s not a _bad_ way to go, and also Jaskier can’t really think clearly enough to form any sort of coherent argument _against_ that, so -

He comes with a shout that rings from the stone walls, and lies there gasping for a minute as Geralt - of course - licks him clean. “Right,” he says when he’s caught his breath. “ _My_ turn.”

Geralt raises an eyebrow and hums, but he also lets Jaskier flip them over so _Geralt_ is the one sprawled out on his back and Jaskier is kneeling over him. And Geralt, naked and spread out on a bed, is a _vision_ , there are half a dozen songs clamoring to be written in the back of Jaskier’s mind and all of them are so filthy he could only ever sing them in a _brothel_ , and Jaskier’s not quite sure where to start so he just - starts in the middle, flings himself joyfully into figuring out what makes Geralt moan or growl or arch up against his hands, his lips, his tongue, his _teeth_. Geralt gets a hand into Jaskier’s hair, not to steer or even to grip but just a warm curl of palm and fingers, and lets Jaskier explore to his heart’s content. So Jaskier does. He kisses every scar he can see - and oh, there are a _lot_ of scars, more than he had noticed in the baths, but then in the baths he was trying _not_ to stare - and runs his hands over acres of surprisingly soft skin covering _unsurprisingly_ hard muscle, and when he’s not kissing he _babbles_ , because that’s what he does, words of praise and awe and frank lust all mixed up together into what he’s fairly sure is an incoherent but appreciative monologue. Geralt hums occasionally and _moans_ occasionally, which is very flattering, and when Jaskier wraps _both_ hands around Geralt’s prick - because one is just not going to be enough - Geralt lets out a groan that seems to come from the bottom of his deep chest and _shudders_ , which is honestly _terrifyingly_ arousing.

Jaskier settles his knees a little better against the sheets and does his damnedest to give the best fucking handjob he’s ever given, and Geralt, to his surprise and delight, is _beautifully_ responsive, panting and groaning and arching up against his hands and finally, gloriously, coming with a long drawn-out moan and a bitten-off curse.

“That,” Jaskier says, “was _gorgeous_.”

Geralt huffs a laugh and props himself up on an elbow and uses the hand he’s still got in Jaskier’s hair to guide him into a kiss. “Should’ve guessed you’d have good hands,” he murmurs against Jaskier’s lips. “Want to fuck you, little lark.”

Jaskier shivers, and realizes rather belatedly that he _has_ managed to get hard again, what with the whole ‘being allowed to do whatever he pleased to a beautiful Witcher’ thing. “I am _entirely_ on board with this plan,” he says breathlessly. “How d’you want me?”

“Hm,” says Geralt, and wraps his hands around Jaskier’s waist and lifts him effortlessly off the bed, shifting him until he’s kneeling straddling Geralt’s waist. Jaskier grabs at Geralt’s shoulders and moans rather a lot. _Fuck_ , but Witcher strength is sexy.

Geralt lets go of him with one hand and reaches out to grab something off the bedside table - a little jar of some sort of oil, apparently, because Geralt thumbs the top of it off and dips his fingers into it and lifts them, dripping, and gives Jaskier a thoughtful sort of look, one eyebrow raised, like he wants to make sure Jaskier knows what he’s getting into. And yes, alright, Geralt might well have the largest prick Jaskier’s ever encountered, but it’s not like the _mechanics_ are any different, so Jaskier grabs Geralt’s wrist and pulls his hand down between Jaskier’s legs, and Geralt chuckles and stops looking thoughtful and starts looking properly _lustful_ again.

He _also_ has very good hands, strong blunt fingers that feel _amazing_ sinking into Jaskier, and Jaskier moans and babbles and writhes happily, at least as much as he can with Geralt’s other hand firm on his hip to hold him mostly still, and gets off almost as much on the way Geralt’s eyes are blown black with lust and he keeps licking his lips a little in concentration as on the hand working carefully and expertly between his legs.

Geralt uses a _lot_ of oil, and is a lot more patient than most of Jaskier’s other partners have been, and by the time he finally slides his fingers out and pushes gently at Jaskier’s hip to get him to shift down, Jaskier is half-mindless with wanting him. It’s probably a good thing Geralt is holding onto him, because Jaskier is tempted to just slide down onto that magnificent prick in one fell swoop, but that would _probably_ be a bad idea, and Geralt makes him take it slowly instead, tiny gentle thrusts that nonetheless make Jaskier shudder with pleasure. When he’s finally fully seated, Geralt’s eyes fall shut for a moment in ecstasy, and Jaskier braces his hands on Geralt’s chest and shifts a little, just to see how it feels. Gods, he’s so fucking _full_.

Geralt lets him take his time, lets him rise up on his knees and sink down again in little restless motions, both of them panting with it, Jaskier moaning thinly between his teeth at how fucking _good_ it is, until almost by accident Jaskier finds exactly the perfect angle to hit _that_ spot, the one that makes him see stars, and then Geralt grins, showing all his teeth, and tightens his grip on Jaskier’s hips to hold him in place, and starts to _thrust_.

Jaskier doesn’t even bother trying to keep his voice down. He _wails_ his pleasure, scrabbling at Geralt’s chest and shoulders with uncoordinated hands because he has to do _something_ with them, pinned and penetrated and _fucked_ as he is, Geralt’s thrusts _perfectly_ aimed and just on the good side of too fucking hard, steady as a fucking _metronome_ , Jaskier could _sing_ to this rhythm. The thought makes him laugh even in the middle of moaning, and he gasps out a line of the bawdiest song he knows, one that really _does_ have almost the same beat as this magnificent fucking, and Geralt _laughs_ , ye gods, he laughs, and it’s so damn beautiful, and Jaskier comes so hard his vision whites out.

Geralt makes a positively feral noise and yanks Jaskier down and spills inside him, hot and filthy and glorious.

Jaskier collapses, utterly uncoordinated, across Geralt’s chest. Geralt lies still beneath him for a long moment, shuddering through the aftershocks of orgasm, and then carefully loosens his grip on Jaskier’s hips. There are going to be bruises there, Jaskier is very sure, and he is going to be absurdly proud of them. Carefully, Geralt helps Jaskier straighten his legs out, until Jaskier is draped over Geralt like a sort of very odd blanket, and then - to Jaskier’s blank surprise and growing delight - Geralt wraps one arm around Jaskier’s waist and combs the fingers of his other hand gently through Jaskier’s hair, over and over, soothing and shockingly sweet.

“My little lark,” Geralt murmurs, breathing in long and slow - smelling _them_ , Jaskier thinks, and grins against Geralt’s throat. Presumably they now smell mostly like sex. Sex and happiness.

“Mmm,” he agrees, and kisses Geralt’s throat, because it’s there and he can. “Your lark. My wolf.”

“Hm,” Geralt says, and there’s a long silence. Jaskier is nearly asleep when Geralt breathes, so softly Jaskier wouldn’t have heard it if he were any farther away, “Your wolf, little lark.”

*

Jaskier wakes up in the White Wolf’s bed, sore and sticky and so gloriously happy that he feels like he’s _glowing_ with it, with the White Wolf himself smiling down at him. Geralt chuckles softly when Jaskier opens his eyes. “Morning, little lark,” he says, voice rough with sleep.

“And what a wonderful morning it is,” Jaskier agrees, and wraps a hand around the back of Geralt’s neck, and pulls him down into a kiss. Geralt, gloriously, kisses him just as thoroughly and enthusiastically as he did last night.

Jaskier doesn’t know what this is, or will be - doesn’t know if Geralt has other lovers, or if _he_ is allowed other lovers, or if this is love or just infatuation on his side, love or just lust on Geralt’s - but for right now, he is the White Wolf’s little lark, safe in the White Wolf’s den, and he is as happy as he has ever been his whole life long.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all so much for the wonderful comments and support; I cannot tell you how happy they make me!
> 
> I'm inexplicifics on tumblr, too.

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